Some concrete plans are actually starting to emerge for the decommissioned Staten Island ferry that Pete Davidson and Colin Jost bought back in 2022.
While the intent was to turn it into some kind of floating entertainment complex, for the past two years, the ferry has ostensibly just been sitting there. It’s been docked in Staten Island — where both Jost and Davidson grew up — and locals have reportedly said they haven’t seen anyone working on it.
Davidson even joked with Entertainment Tonight last June, “I have no idea what’s going on with that thing. Me and Colin were very stoned a year ago and bought a ferry. And we’re figuring it out.” Jost, for his part, insisted he was, in fact, “stone-cold sober” when they bought it in an Instagram post promoting a run of stand-up dates conspicuously dubbed the “Ferry Money Tour.”
As it turned out, the floundering was mostly just a bit. A few weeks after making the “because I got high” excuse, Davidson told Seth Meyers there was actually a lot going on behind the scenes — architectural renderings, conference calls, things of that nature. And now, one of the folks on the other side of those calls, architect Ron Castellano, has shared a bunch more details in a new interview with Curbed.
“It’s going to have a lot of things,” Castellano said of the ferry. “I think right now, we have six bars and two venues operated separately or combined. We have outdoor event space, we have restaurants — two restaurants. It’s a big boat, almost 300 feet long, 65,000 square feet. That’s one and a half times the size of Nine Orchard Hotel” (which Castellano also helped design).
Castellano added that the ferry will have one floor of hotel rooms — 24 rooms total, each with “private sundecks” — and there’s ongoing talk of a pool, or at least something along those lines. “We’re going back and forth,” he said. “There’s a little Jacuzzi kind of thing, but not a full-on pool. We’d have to do a floating pool.
While there was never a plan to fix up or replace the original ferry engine, the boat won’t be staying in one place. A tow boat will be able to tug it around, and Davidson had previously suggested a route between New York City and Miami. Castellano said, “That’s exactly still the plan,” while noting nothing’s been finalized yet: “It doesn’t have to be in one place. It can move, so we’re exploring both locations.”
As for when the Davidson/Jost ferry extravaganza will finally set sail — well, that’s unsurprisingly unclear, and there’s a lot more work to do. “We have sort of the initial construction phase underway, like, we’re just bidding it out as it gets done,” Castellano said. “That’s going to take a year, and as that happens, we’re tightening the drawings, and as that’s happening, we’re going to find the location.”
