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Little room for boats

Early edition

By Scott Barancik
Published December 15, 2006

By most accounts, the boating industry is enjoying a golden age. Boat registrations in Florida have risen 30 percent in the past decade.

Affluent baby boomers, a key market, are expected to flock to the coasts in ever greater numbers as they retire.

There’s only one problem: the waterfront isn’t getting any bigger. And thanks to America’s insatiable demand for luxury homes and condos, it’s becoming increasingly hard to find a place for all our powerboats. In Pinellas County, for example, officials estimate 5.5 percent of all slips were lost to conversion this year.

At St. Petersburg’s 610-slip Municipal Marina, the wait list is up to 479 people, with some expected to wait five and a half years.

Landlubbers have something at stake, too. The Marine Industries Association of Florida estimates that boating contributed $18.4-billion and 220,000 jobs to the state’s economy last year, more than the citrus and cruise industries combined.

Neither figure takes into account the intangible draw of the water for retirees and corporations seeking a new home.

“You pull boating from some of these communities, and what do you have?” said Pete Smith, director of development at Clearwater’s MarineMax, the country’s No. 1 boat retailer.

“If you continue to lose boating access, you are in danger of losing your boating economy,” added Ed Mahoney, director of the Recreational Marine Research Center at Michigan State University.

Meanwhile, industry leaders are in a bit of a bind. They need to sound the panic alarm loud enough to motivate state and local governments to preserve boat slips, but not so loud as to spook potential customers.

Middle-income boaters have perhaps the most to lose. They can’t afford the slips that developers buy and reserve for luxury-condo dwellers. They can’t buy homes with private docks.

They can’t find the $50,000 to $100,000 to buy a spot in so-called rackaminiums -- dry-stack storage barns that speculators are buying and converting from rentals into boat “condos.”

 “It’s not only the amount of access, but who can access,” Mahoney said.

Companies like MarineMax are concerned. “The guy who buys a 19-foot boat today may buy a 50-foot boat years from now,” Smith said.

This year, the company took the unprecedented step of co-acquiring a 95-slip Gulfport marina, largely to guarantee water access for its top customers.

Florida and bay area officials are working with the industry on solutions.

After a local task force recommended it, Pinellas County bought its first marina this year, along the Anclote River in Tarpon Springs, as well as a boat ramp and 16 slips in Palm Harbor. The City of Clearwater is considering building new slips.

Legislative options being explored statewide include creating preferential tax rates for marina owners, paying marina owners not to sell unless the buyer promises to maintain existing slips, and expediting the environmental and construction permitting process.. Thom Dammich, president of the National Marine Manufacturers Association, said it can take up to nine years and millions of dollars to build a new marina.

But some solutions can only go so far. MarineMax hasn’t replicated its purchase this year of the Great American Marina in Gulfport, and the company is one of perhaps just a couple in its field that has the financial wherewithal to do so. Pinellas County could purchase more marinas, but because it cannot match the sky-high bids of developers, it must rely on finding marina owners who are willing to sacrifice for a cause.

“A marina is never going to have a higher value, economically, than a high-rise condominium,” Dammich said. “So we’ve got to find alternatives.”

Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8751.

[Last modified December 15, 2006, 21:07:46]