[Frankie]

City could land floating museum
Non-profit group hopes to turn Coast Guard vessel into a riverfront attraction

By William Mullen
Tribune staff reporter
Published October 30, 2006

Long a welcome sight to mariners experiencing trouble on Lake Michigan, the recently retired U.S. Coast Guard cutter Acacia should soon be familiar to strollers and tourists along the banks of the Chicago River.

The decommissioned 180-foot icebreaker and buoy tender was donated to the state of Illinois, which is working with Chicago and the non-profit, locally based American Academy of Industry to make it into a riverfront museum dedicated to the city's rich maritime history.

Moored temporarily at Burns Harbor in Indiana, the 62-year-old Acacia is still outfitted with almost all its working gear--minus machine guns and ammunition.

"The Coast Guard sailed it in here, tied off and left it with us with the engine still running and food in the fridge," academy president Dan Hecker said as he showed off the vessel on a recent Sunday afternoon after the deal was announced.

The boat is to be shifted soon to a Chicago location for the winter. Both the city and the academy would like to have the ship open as a museum by next summer, Hecker said.

Hecker, 46, said he and his brother, Marty, 40, founded the academy in 1995 with the goal of turning a vessel into a maritime museum. Initially, the group boasted more than 200 members. But after years of failed attempts to find a ship, the active number dwindled to "maybe a dozen," he said.

"I was beginning to give the idea up when I got a call last April from a state official asking me if we would be interested in the Acacia," Dan Hecker said.

Plans to sell the ship to an African nation apparently had fallen through, and Coast Guard officials, reviewing their options, pulled a letter from the academy from their files. By law, the Coast Guard could not convey ownership to the academy but arranged to do it through state officials.

City sees benefits

City officials see the Acacia as an asset in their efforts to spruce up the Chicago River's image and are looking at several mooring spots, said Brian Steele, spokesman for the Transportation Department.

Ideally, he said, the ship would go along the river's main branch, perhaps between Clark and Dearborn.

"The concept of the ship becoming a maritime museum is a very appealing one," Steele said. "There are myriad issues that have to be settled in choosing a site for it, including easy public accessibility, making sure the ship does not disturb normal river navigation and incorporating it with city plans for a river walk."

Plans are for much of the ship to be maintained as a time capsule, showing how it worked up to the time of its retirement.

"The initial primary artifact for the museum is the Acacia itself," said Marty Hecker, a Coast Guard naval architect in Maryland. "It is an exceptional ship."......