Urban Commons, the newest and, if there’s a just and loving God, the last, operator of the Queen Mary, has yet another expensive problem on its hands: As part of its dream project to turn the Queen into an extravagant entertainment complex and major tourist attraction, it needs to get rid of the ship’s longtime sidekick, the Cold War-era Soviet Scorpion submarine.

The submarine has been living a life of quiet neglect in the water off the bow of the Queen Mary. Ever since its arrival in Long Beach in 1998 to serve a second career as an adjunct tourist draw with the Queen, the sub has been so ravaged by rust, time, salt-water and a contingent of squatter raccoons that, if it were to be recommissioned as a tourist attraction, someone would need to spend an estimated $10 million on repairs.

It was almost as if the two vessels had a side wager on which could fall apart first.

Sinking the sub, finally, as an attraction was a rupture in its hull that resulted in a flooded ballast tank, causing it to list dangerously to port. It closed for good in the summer of 2015.

The sub, which, in its heyday, when the Cold War was still cool, actually made money for a while — as much as $500,000 take-home — during its 17 years as a tourist draw, according to a lawsuit by the sub’s owner against three of the Queen’s operators who have reigned in the years since the Scorpion docked here.

That suit, meanwhile, has been dismissed, effectively leaving the Scorpion as Urban Commons’ problem. That’s another cost to tag onto the likely half-billion dollars it will take to transform the Queen and its surrounding property into the Urban Commons’ dazzling vision of boardwalks, amphitheaters, rock-climbing gyms, game arcades, restaurants and clubs. All by 2023.

So, what do you do with an all-but-sunken submarine?

Swallow the $10 million and doll it up as an exclusive Strip Sub VIP champagne room for high-dollar visitors?

Throw some yellow paint on it and hire a Fab Four tribute band to serenade guests?

Pawn it off it to a Russian oligarch who’s still harboring happy nostalgic sentiments for those heady pre-Gorbachev-glasnost days of 1970s and ‘80s when the nuclear-armed Scorpion was still happily hounding U.S. Naval vessels all over the Pacific?

Monorail?

Give the poor abused and neglected thing the rest it deserves and haul it out for a burial at sea and let it spend the rest of its deteriorating days as an artificial reef, now that all the real ones are disappearing?

For a company like Urban Commons which throws money figures around like it’s theoretical math, the Scorpion seems like only a tiny hurdle compared to what the company has to do to get the main attraction itself up and running. But at any rate, the company says the Scorpion isn’t a good fit for its envisioned QM complex.

The same argument should’ve been made back when city leaders were mounting their effort to get the Queen to Long Beach. At the time Long Beach bought it, the trans-Atlantic ocean liner had never visited this city. As far as Long Beach was concerned, it was a floating non sequitur.

By now, the ship is of course considered synonymous with Long Beach even though, or perhaps because, it has cost the city millions of dollars and has lost most of whatever luster it had when Long Beach took ownership.

Urban Commons has already blown through the $23 million the city has kicked in for repairs, with some stunning overages, including an expenditure of nearly $6 million for roofing and deck repairs that were estimated to cost $2.13 million, and $2.8 million for hull paint and rust repairs that was estimated to cost $1.7 million.

And there’s still more to be done, with God only knows what other surprises might crop up along the same lines as being suddenly saddled with a sinking Soviet submarine.

Tim Grobaty is a columnist and the Opinions Editor for the Long Beach Post. You can reach him at 562-714-2116, email [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter and Grobaty on Facebook.