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PO Box 1212 Tampa, FL 33601 Pinellas Updated April 2006
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Big-Slip Marina Ready For Launch TAMPA - An $8 million, 149-slip marina is opening at the Westshore Yacht Club development in south Tampa, the first new wet-slip, state-of-the-art marina for big boats to open in the city in at least 20 years.
Owners of watercraft ranging from 40 to 100 feet will pay $20 per linear foot - or $800 to $2,000 per month - to keep their vessels at the marina. It's part of an upscale 537-unit residential development off South West Shore Boulevard, where town houses, midrise, single-family and bayfront homes go for $500,000 to $3 million.
The developer expects the marina to be 30 percent full when it's unveiled at an invitation-only event tonight. Nonresidents may inquire about keeping their boats at the marina after May 1, said Joe Scionti, director of commercial construction.
The developer, WCI Communities Inc., known for building Sun City Center and other projects in Florida and other states, is counting on marina business from boat-owning residents moving into upscale residential developments being built across the Tampa area, Scionti said.
The waterfront location and the revitalization of the south West Shore area made it ideal for the marina, said Mark Fruehan, who handles corporate acquisitions and new business development for WCI Communities Inc.
"It was a natural for us to explore the opportunity to do a marina," Fruehan said. "There has been an increase in boat ownership and registration but but not an equal growth in marinas. ... A lot of your bigger-boat owners don't have places to keep them on [Florida's] west coast."
The demand is there for an upscale marina, said Mike Emmanuel, general manager of nearby Tampa Bayside Marina, which houses RattleFish Raw Bar & Grill, on Tyson Avenue.
"I've watched it since [it] was a large old warehouse-factory," Emmanuel said of the marina site.
Gloria Moreda, the city's land development coordination manager, said she does not recall any other marinas being built in Tampa in the past 20 years.
The new marina required permits from more than a dozen agencies and took more than two years of paperwork, Scionti said.
"Permitting was a job in itself," he said.
When boat owners sign the annual contract, they gain membership to the 17,000-square-foot Bay Club at Westshore Yacht Club, which has a fitness area, cigar room, dining room and man-made beach. They receive water and sewage pump services at their boat slips under the contract but have to pay extra for Internet and TV service, Scionti said.
The Bay Club, under construction and scheduled to open in spring 2007, is next to the marina's 800-square-foot dockmaster building.
WCI Communities is planning an additional 100 slips at a cost of $7 million under Phase 2, but the developer does not know when those slips will be built. The housing development will be built out by 2009, and half of its housing units are sold, said Katherine Han, WCI public relations manager.
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