Era of riverboat as landmark ends

Some think of it as the Pride of Newport, some as the Ruben E. Lee restaurant it once housed. Others refer to it as the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, though the museum has recently moved to the Balboa Fun Zone.

However one thinks of it, the massive paddlewheel boat next to East Coast Highway that has been a landmark of Newport Harbor since 1964 will probably soon leave the dock and never return. More likely than not, the harbor icon will be scrapped.

The search for a buyer for the boat lasted six months, and a Dec. 31 deadline for an offer has passed, said David Muller, executive director of the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum.

“You never know if there’s going to be a white knight out of nowhere,” he said. “But we’re moving forward with a plan to have the boat removed from the dock.”

It won’t be tomorrow or next week, he said. But within a few months, workers will move the boat away from the leased dock it occupies and dismantle it piece by piece. Even if some perfect buyer suddenly shows up, they won’t be able to leave it at the dock, and Muller said he thinks there isn’t “a sliver of a chance” it will stay in Newport Harbor, where mooring space is at a premium.

The museum’s 10-year lease on the property expired in June, Muller said. The museum has been paying higher rent month to month since then. But since its exhibits are now fully installed at its Balboa Peninsula location, the board of directors is ready to stop paying $8,400 a month for an empty husk.

Even Newport Beach resident Bill Blurock, who designed the aging paddleboat, is ready to let go.

“It was designed for 20 years, and it’s stayed there for 40,” he said. “It’s served its purpose, so what the heck — here you are.”

Blurock said that when he took on the project to design the boat as a floating restaurant for a client, he saw it as just another job, though an ambitious one. He never expected it to make such a mark on the community.

“It’s an icon for the area now,” he said. “I think we’re all surprised a little bit that it took off and became a landmark.”

The Ruben E. Lee restaurant in Newport Harbor was one of three such boats. The other two were in San Diego and St. Louis, Blurock said.

Getting a permit for the restaurant, a cross between a building and a vessel in the harbor, was quite a hassle, he said. The coast guard wouldn’t issue one, and neither would the harbor department.

“Finally, the fire department wanted it,” he said, chuckling. “It was a restaurant. They signed off on it as a two-story building with a basement, penthouse and an attic” — with no mention that it was a boat.

But Blurock doesn’t just look back on the past as its designer. As a member of the museum’s board of trustees, he says he can’t feel too bad about the move.

“In all fairness to the whole project, the museum’s going to do much better over at the fun zone than it ever did on the Coast Highway,” he said.