Artship anchors new Oakland waterfront

She once packed 22 guns to ward off attackers.

Now she stands proudly on the Oakland waterfront with 10 battle stars, a lot of history and plans for a grand future packing 'em in to theater productions, filmmaking, dancing, art shows, jazz, socializing and the good old life of enjoying things beautiful.

She's Artship, a.k.a. the cruise ship DelOrleans, attack troop transport USS Crescent City and training ship Golden Bear. She stands today at the Ninth Avenue pier at the intersection of Oakland's revitalized waterfront and its renaissance of the arts.

In previous lives, she hauled coffee and passengers between New Orleans and South American ports on the Atlantic, fought with U.S. forces in the Pacific and then helped train the officers of America's maritime fleets.

Now, as an elder, she is evolving with a new life as a floating performing arts center and a symbol of the new Oakland.

``You need something that is as big as a cathedral to make the city come together,'' said Slobodan Dan Paich, executive director of the Artship Foundation, who once taught architecture at the University of California-Berkeley.

You can't miss the giant ship tied to the Ninth Avenue pier.

Artship was once one of the ghosts with the Ghost Fleet in Suisun Bay, where America stores part of its reserve fleet. It was called back to duty in 1999 and towed to a new home on the Oakland waterfront, becoming part of the waterscape seen by motorists zipping by on nearby Interstate 880.

The ship is right in the middle of the 19 miles of Oakland waterfront undergoing renovation. The waterfront used to be mostly off-limits to the public, since most of it was military bases. Now the Port of Oakland has doubled in size, adding to its 665 acres 520 acres of former naval property. Construction of new piers, container ports, parks, parking lots, trails and apartment buildings is ongoing.

At the same time, Oakland's city government and its artists have been working to blend what critics have called ``offbeat arts, button-down government.'' The arts have been injected into recreation programs, parks and community centers, and downtown Oakland is an art gallery buff's dream.

The Artship Foundation has been instrumental in getting local art into storefront windows throughout the city.

At the intersection of these two trends sits the Artship.

It is already an art gallery and studio. It's used for children's shows, dancing, music, rehearsals, study, writing, planning and filmmaking.

But it is only at the very beginning of an ambitious 10-year plan that will transform it into one of the Bay Area's prime venues for art, music and the performing arts. Its three giant cargo holds will become seven-story theaters.

$10 million project

The 491-foot-long ship will also become a training center and headquarters for community outreach and art programs run by the foundation and other art and cultural organizations. The cost of the ambitious project is about $10 million and will be paid through grants, donations, Silicon Valley benefactors and a planned marine apprentice training program for the U.S. Department of Commerce.

That program, foundation board member and artist TheArthur Wright said, could bring in an annual income of $1 million.

The ship already is configured as a maritime school, since its last sea duty was as the officers training ship Golden Bear with the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo.

The plan is to train ship crews, targeting Oakland high school graduates. Other education programs also will be based at the ship.

Besides its role in the arts and education, the ship is an art deco museum, a tribute to its past life as a luxury ship with accommodations for 69 and, in World War II, as an attack troop transport with accommodations for 1,100.

With coffee brimming in its three holds, the ship carried passengers on the New Orleans-South America run until it was drafted in 1941 as a troop transport.

A week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the ship, commissioned as the USS Crescent City, sailed for Hawaii with troops and equipment.

In 1942, the Crescent City's gunners shot down four fighters as it landed U.S. forces on Guadalcanal. She fought her way through the war, landing troops or serving as a hospital ship in 10 battles from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.

She still carries at least one scar from the war.

``Here,'' Wright said when he gave me a tour of the old lady. He was pointing to a dent on her smokestack. ``This is the only scar I've seen.''

Artistic fermentation

As Wright walked across the deck with a view of the Coast Guard's Government Island, the estuary and the San Francisco skyline in the background, he gave me a tour of the future. ``This is the cafe,'' he said. ``Here are the patio tables, the lounge chairs, the trees.''

We had just finished a tour of the ship where artists are already at work in the staterooms and the cargo holds.

All over the ship are paintings, sculptures, rooms full of plans and drawings, art fabrics and even large puppets for a children's show.

``It might not look like much, but there is a lot of fermentation going on,'' Wright said. ``You can see the dream happening.''