Boat club site may become school

The Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority is considering a proposal to spend $20 million turning the century-old Detroit Boat Club on Belle Isle Park into a 400-student maritime charter academy.

Construction of Detroit Marine High School could start as early as this fall with the first classes meeting in the summer of 2007, said former State Sen. John Kelly.

“The automotive industry is going offshore,” Kelly said. “But the movement of goods is one of our assets we can take advantage of. The maritime industry on the Great Lakes handles 40 percent of the shipping in the U.S.”

Kelly from 1978-96 represented Detroit and the Grosse Pointes in the state Senate, where he chaired the committee on banking and economic development.

The former lawmaker was a consultant to the port authority on putting the proposal together.

Port authority executive director Curtis Hertel Sr. would not comment on the proposal, which would have to be approved by Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the Detroit City Council.

The port authority has the legal ability to sell bonds to finance the academy, but the boat club, built in 1902, has been owned by the city of Detroit since 1996. Its only tenant has been the Detroit Rowing Club, which would be encouraged to continue using the facility.

Kelly envisions the senior high school as a college prep school that would emphasize sciences such as navigation and ecology and trades like culinary arts, diesel engine repair and marina management.

Students would wear uniforms and be employed in a co-op jobs program. By graduation, the 11th- and 12th-graders would be prepared for college and for military service of the merchant marine.

“My long-term plan,” he said, “is to incorporate the Dossin Great Lakes Museum and the aquarium.”

He said the now-closed 100-year-old aquarium would be suitable for research into exotic species like zebra mussels invading the Great Lakes from abroad.