Eleven years after its acquisition, the city Wednesday officially transferred the 2,000-ton vessel set to serve as the prime attraction of the U.S. Corps of Engineers Museum back to the Army agency.

The start of construction on the $12 million City Front project, however, remains at least two years away.

At a special-called meeting, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen unanimously approved the transfer of the MV Mississippi, a 218-foot towboat built in 1961 that served for 30 years as the flagship of the Corps of Engineers’ work fleet.

The Corps received $51 million from Congress from the 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations Act, of which $5 million was approved last year for the museum. Officials have said that money will be followed by a Fiscal Year 2006-07 appropriation of $7 million to complete the project, officially named the Lower Mississippi River Museum and Interpretive Site.

&#8220I’d rather not predict Congress, but it’s expected,” said Doug Kamien, chief civilian engineer for the Vicksburg District’s Projects Management Division.

Mayor Laurence Leyens has said he received &#8220complete affirmation” from Washington during a February trip that the project will be funded and was eager to turn over the boat.

&#8220It’s been sitting there and it’s costing us a fortune” to move in accordance with the river level, he said after the Corps’ annual High Water Inspection in April.

Completion of the project, which includes plans to move the 100-year-old iron Fairground Street bridge to the site at the old Levee Street Depot, is not expected until at least 2009, Kamien said. That will follow the process of advertising, bidding and awarding three contracts – one to tow the MV Mississippi from Vicksburg Harbor to the proposed museum site at City Front, one to refurbish the boat and a final contract to build the museum itself along Jackson Street between Washington and Levee streets – before construction can begin in 2008.

&#8220Hopefully this fall we’re going to award a contract to move the vessel onto the museum site,” Kamien said. The Corps has not begun advertising for bids on the move, he added.

The $5 million appropriation came 14 years after Congress originally authorized the project in 1992 with $2 million for planning. In 1995, Mayor Joe Loviza’s administration paid the Corps $1 for the retired MV Mississippi.

The city paid $620,000 to secure the proposed museum site before any money was appropriated, Leyens said.

The museum will depict the history of the Corps, the branch of the U.S. Army assigned to civil works, including flood control and navigation on the Mississippi River, and tours of the boat will also be available.

In other business, the Mayor and Aldermen: