Resurrecting the Spirit of Des Moines

/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BR_web_311x311.jpeg

Restoring the boat formerly known as the Spirit of Des Moines has been a messy, expensive and tedious process, but Michael LaValle would have expected nothing less from this boat, which he jokingly says has been “one disaster after another.”

LaValle, general manager and culinary director of the Des Moines Embassy Club, and his investment partners operated the Spirit of Des Moines on the Des Moines River for about five years, until June 25, 1995, when an inebriated woman untied the boat from its dock. As a result, the boat caught on the Center Street dam, tipped and filled with water, and lay half-submerged in the river. After several years of uncertainty over what to do with the 80-foot vessel, now LaValle is more determined than ever to return it to the water.

“I’m just such a stubborn person that I’m going to see this through,” he said. “I’m going to make it better than before, with a vengeance.”

From the beginning, the paddleboat posed challenges to its Greater Des Moines owners, which in addition to LaValle, included local businessmen John Ruan III and Bill Knapp.

“We had to call the governor’s office to get the thing here from the Mississippi River,” LaValle said. “We knocked out cable TV in several small towns we went through and spent so much money on semi-trucks and cranes to move it. Everything with the boat is a disaster much of the time.”

More drama followed the Spirit of Des Moines during its five-year run on the Des Moines River, where it took passengers on lunch and dinner cruises starting from the Des Moines Botanical Center.

“We got stuck on sandbars every now and then when the river was low,” LaValle said. “There is one famous story where we were stuck and had the belly dancers on board dance us loose to help get the boat off the sandbar.”

One summer, two teenagers broke into the boat and vandalized it. But the biggest problem the boat experienced was when it was let loose, which LaValle describes as a “freak accident.”

“A couple of things had to happen exactly right for this boat to sink,” LaValle said. “The cable across the river had to be at the right height. The river had to be flooded and the boat had to be empty so it could run at a good speed. All five of the compartments filled at once, when you can fill any two of them and it won’t sink.

“You could have shot a hole in this thing and it wouldn’t have sunk if you tried. It was a freak accident.”

After the boat was retrieved from the river, LaValle bought it from the salvage yard, unsure at the time what to do with the battered behemoth.

“When I bought the boat from the insurance company, I hadn’t made a decision on what to do with it,” LaValle said. “I just wanted to save it from being destroyed. The person I was bidding against for it was literally going to bring in his cutting torch and cut it up into little pieces.”

A rich history

It was disheartening for LaValle to think of his unique boat as scrap metal. He said the boat, built in 1967 by the Dubuque Boat and Boiler Co., was originally named Lady D, named after the wife of the company’s founder. Not only was it one of the last paddleboats that company ever produced; according to LaValle, it was the first boat in the world to match, via a hydraulic system, a diesel motor with a paddlewheel system.

The boat’s history is a little murky, but LaValle’s research has uncovered some interesting pieces of information about it.

“Gordon Bickal, the pilot of the Spirit of Dubuque, said he won the Hannibal, Mo., paddlewheel race with this boat when he was operating it in Missouri as the Belle of Hannibal,” LaValle said.

Another person said he remembers the boat operating in Chicago as the Belle of Chicagoland. It was the Belle of Clinton before LaValle and his partners bought it from a bank in Moline, Ill.

For several years after the accident, LaValle moved the paddleboat from one lot to another, fielding complaints from neighbors everywhere he went about its appearance making it a public nuisance. More than once, vandals have broken windows and spray-painted obscenities on the boat. The boat now sits on a lot LaValle owns adjacent to the Graziano Bros. grocery store on South Union Street.

A slow makeover

Since the boat has been in LaValle’s possession, it has been stabilized, which involved scooping the mud out of the boat, cleaning and repairing its motors and pumps, replacing the roof, and sandblasting and welding the body.

Next was demolition. LaValle said this included filling trash bins with old two-by-fours, insulation, light fixtures and plumbing. “There isn’t one foot of original wiring left in this boat,” he said.

Then came structural steel repair, followed by motor and pump replacement and wiring. Now is the finishing stage, and later this month, LaValle will install a temporary metal building over the boat to protect it from the elements and vandals during its completion. Many of the expenses incurred during the boat restoration have been five-figure sums.

“It’s all those layers that make it a difficult restoration,” LaValle said. “The boat is really like a floating city. It has its own sewage tanks, electrical system, heating and air conditioning, water tanks, diesel motor, generator and hydraulic system. It’s a fascinating number of things that have to work perfectly together.

“When we deal with setbacks, it can be a burden, but when I come in and see that something is really looking good, I think to myself, ‘This will really be something.’”

During the past few years, LaValle has enlisted the help of Seattle-based Elliott Bay Design Group. This architectural engineering company ensures that LaValle is using U.S. Coast Guard-approved materials and organizes inspections to make sure the boat meets standards for its size.

Local contractors and historic preservation specialist Judy McClure are also working on the project, which is expected to be completed next spring.

“You wouldn’t guess we’re almost done from looking at the outside of it, but we’re two-thirds done now and ready for the interior and exterior finishing work,” LaValle said. “And when we’re done, it’s going to be beyond the level of any boat that I’m aware of operating.”

LaValle and McClure are planning many upgrades and a “high-end” interior finish for the boat, which will have a Victorian feel, McClure said. She has ordered galvanized stamped tin for the ceiling and ornate cornices and rope columns, all of which will be painted gold. Part of the boat’s ceiling will be raised, and from the outside, it will give the appearance of a pilot’s house on top of the boat, along with letting more light into the dining area.

McClure said what makes this project unusual is that the boat was built in the 1960s to replicate the fancy excursion paddleboats from the 1800s.

“It’s not going to be a true restoration because this is a newer boat, but we’re borrowing some of those style things from the 1800s, with real wood and pressed tin, while incorporating a little bit of aquatic motif.”

McClure, a former neighbor of LaValle’s when he lived in the historic Sherman Hill district in Des Moines, said the project is “an undertaking,” but one that she knows will be successful because of LaValle’s involvement.

“When I got involved last fall, I never gave any thought to it not working out, because I knew that if Michael was going to do it, it was going to be done,” McClure said.

‘Urban lake’ this time

With all that LaValle has invested in the boat so far, and what he expects to still spend over the next several months to complete the project, he wants the boat to operate on a safer water than the Des Moines River.

“I won’t go back on the river because of the dams,” he said. “We all saw what happened last time. I’m going back on a really nice, boring lake somewhere, so if the boat was ever free, floating around the lake, you could just go over to the bank and bring it home.”

LaValle is not yet sure where the paddleboat will dock once it is ready for water, but he’s making sure it meets all Coast Guard regulations so that it is qualified to go anywhere. He says a boat operator on the Mississippi River has expressed interest in buying the boat, but he would prefer to keep it nearby, on an urban lake, so that he could enjoy it and share it with Greater Des Moines.

“I think the future of this boat is in doing charters,” he said. “We could do jazz cruises, historical charters, corporate retreats and rehearsal dinners. People have such a good time on the water.”

A secondary use for the boat, LaValle said, will be educational tours for children. Having three kids of his own, ages 14, 12 and 10, made him see a need for this.

“If you want to have children connected to where they were raised and not leave, then you have to give them historical education, and I think we can do that via the boat,” he said.

“Say we’re out on Gray’s Lake or Raccoon River Lake. We can hire a couple of actors to pull up in a canoe beside us. They can hail down the boat and get on board and ask the captain where Fort Des Moines is because they have these furs they want to trade. The kids aboard would learn that Des Moines is here because it was a trading center at one time.”

But many things would have to fall into place for LaValle to fulfill his wish of operating the boat locally, and with this boat, luck has not always been on his side. A lot will be determined about its future over the next few months.

“I think back to the first day it’s out floating somewhere, and I’m going to take it for a tour around the lake myself and put on my little captain’s hat and honk the horn,” LaValle said. “Maybe the next day I’ll sell it. I don’t know. But not until I do that one thing and have all my friends on it.”