Group plans ship's revival. (Sault Ste. Marie).

The desire to put a fresh face on a historic waterfront relic is behind a Sault Ste. Marie marine heritage group's efforts for a physical and image overhaul of the museum ship Norgoma.

Besides wanting to better display the unique history at the 188-foot (85-metre) former Great Lakes passenger ship, volunteers of the St. Mary's River Marine Centre are making plans for a $2.9-million endeavour to refurbish the vessel and expand the attraction to include an on-shore interpretative centre celebrating local marine commerce and the St. Mary's River.

"Sault Ste. Marie was developed here because of its relationship with the water," says volunteer Bill Polnick. "It's part of our heritage. Without the river there wouldn't be a St. Marys Paper or an Algoma Steel."

The proposed 6,000-square-foot marine heritage interpretative centre, conceptualized as an octagonal building peaked on top to resemble a lighthouse, would be situated adjacent to the Norgoma's marina berth at Roberta Bondar Park.

The Norgoma has been a mainstay on the Sault's waterfront since the city purchased the ship in the mid-1970s after it was retired from service by the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission.

As a predecessor to the Chi-Cheemaun, it last operated as a car ferry between Manitoulin Island and Tobermory. During the 1950s and 60s it plied the waters of Lake Huron's North Channel delivering passengers and freight to small out-port communities between Sault Ste. Marie and Parry Sound.

Volunteers want to draw on that rich heritage by renovating the ship's displays with audio-visual exhibits and refurbishing the cabins for a 14-room bed-and-breakfast.

The onshore centre would key in on the history of the St. Mary's River, now classified as a national heritage river, heralding the symbiotic relationship between this vital shipping lane and the city's growth as an industrial centre. Its centrepiece artifact would be a donated triple-expansion steam engine taken from a former Mackinaw Straits car ferry.

Over the years a small core of boat buffs have acted as the Norgoma's caretakers, relying almost extensively on private donations and admissions from the estimated 8,000 annual visitors for reinvestment back-into the ship.

But the 52-year-old ship requires almost constant upkeep, including replacement of a leaking roof, and the group is counting on federal and provincial granting agencies to come through with heritage dollars and on-some community fundraising events to open a revamped attraction by the summer of 2003.

If done right, a Peterborough tourism marketing consultant who is preparing a project feasibility study and business plan tells them a renovated and expanded attraction should draw 14,400 visitors in the first year and 19,500 within three years, based on research of other Great Lakes museum ships.

Polnick credits volunteer John Bain, a retired city planner, with being one of the "driving forces" behind the restoration project.

Bain, who was unavailable for an inter view in early March, was one of the chief architects behind the transition, during the 1970s and 80s, of the city's waterfront from a working commercial harbour to a people place. He was also instrumental in bringing the Norgoma to the Sault and dusting off old city plans for the interpretive centre.

City tourism manager Ian McMillan admits the Norgoma's ongoing state of repair and static displays have not attracted the kind of crowds it should for an marine artifact of its size. Some Sault residents even regard the ship as a public eyesore.

"If you did a community poll, some would say sink it, bomb it, get rid of it," McMillan says. "Then you have those who feel it's a genuine waterfront attraction.

"I tend to be one of the latter. I mean, how many communities have the last passenger vessel on the Great Lakes?," says McMillan, who acts as an advisor to the Norgoma group.

McMillan fully supports the group's proposal for some much-needed esthetic upkeep and new programming to boost the ship's stature as a major waterfront anchor attraction.

Aside from participating in sprucing up the Norgoma, McMillan is dedicating his 2002 tourism marketing campaign to building on the successful Agawa Canyon Tour Train marketshare program, which packages up local destination attractions through the accommodations sector.

"Using the vehicle we have and the mediums that we know work - newspapers, magazines and advertising --we want to expand the offerings we have for family vacations based on packages,"' McMillan says.

"We want to bring more partners on board like the Sault charity casino and the new Crimson Ridge Golf Course in developing some stay-and-play packages around that."

Moreover, he hopes to incorporate a newly formed Four Cultures group comprised of representatives from the Canadian Bushplane Museum, the Art Gallery of Algoma, the Sault museum and the Ermatinger Old Stone House heritage site, who have teamed up to offer a single-ticket program for all four attractions.