This has been happening in Southwest Florida for the past 10 years...and in
Southeast Florida for longer than that.

It just started happening in the Keys a couple of years ago, but fortunately
the real estate market took a hit and slowed things down.

I had a boat stored at a marina that leased the land, and the landlord
decided not to re-lease the property *at any price*. They sold it for $20
million to Eco-Group...a large developer out of Tampa.

Same thing happened to two other marinas in Naples in the past 3 years.




"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...
Ran into a situation today that I am sure we will be witnessing more
frequently.

I know a young couple who operate a very decent little sales and
service shop in a middle sized city north of Seattle on Puget Sound.
It's a family business that has supported them and their kids for the
last several years, but when I ran into them today they
mentioned they had decided to close up shop.

Interesting, and sad, is the reason why:

The local marina is expanding at their location. That should be good
news, except for the fact that as part of the expansion a "public/
private partnership" is building a fancy new condominium complex. A
huge new mooring basin has been dredged and developed, but guess what?
Those slips aren't available long term to the general public (i.e. the
taxpayers who funded the development of this public land), they are
being given to the condo development company as a reward for
developing the condo village at the site, and any time that a condo
resident wants to purchase one of the slips (from the development
company, of course), any tenant that is merely renting the slip will
be subject to eviction.

How this concerns my friends and their boat shop: They are currently
occupying a fairly old building that fronts a road running along the
perimeter of the marina. They have a small office and retail area, and
several service bays.

"Our lease is up pretty soon, and the Port is going to tear down this
building," they said. "We've been offered the same square footage in
one of the new commercial buildings that will be part of the
condominium complex, but there's going to be a difference in rent.
Right now, we pay about $25,000 per year to rent this space, but after
they force us to move next year the rent would go up to $14,000 a
month. That's a total of $168,000 per year in rent, or $143,000 more
than we're paying now. We can't see any reason to keep the doors open
with that sort of increase in overhead."

Obviously my friends did what anybody else would do in the same
situation- took a careful look at how much they're able to put in
their pockets each year with the current overhead, subtracted $143,000
from that number to reflect the future overhead, and looked at the
amount left over and asked, "why bother"?

Congrats to the greedy arse port authorities and the high dollar condo
developers. They have completely overlooked that fact that most of the
infrastructure for boating consists of small and medium size family
businesses. Those software millionaires living the fat life in the
waterfront condo McMansions have a rude awakening in store......even
if they buy the slips out from under the public and moor their gold
plated boats, their very presence will have raised real estate values
to the point where nobody will be able to remain in business to
service or maintain them.

Coming before all that very long to the waterfront near you...
Pretty sad.

On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:37:05 GMT, "NOYB" wrote:

This has been happening in Southwest Florida for the past 10 years...and in
Southeast Florida for longer than that.

It just started happening in the Keys a couple of years ago, but fortunately
the real estate market took a hit and slowed things down.

I had a boat stored at a marina that leased the land, and the landlord
decided not to re-lease the property *at any price*. They sold it for $20
million to Eco-Group...a large developer out of Tampa.

Same thing happened to two other marinas in Naples in the past 3 years.

Don't most of those waterfront condo developments build marinas?
Maybe not boatyards, but at least berths?
I didn't look close, but it seemed that in Punta Gorda dockage
increased when they put up condos. They may not be renting
out the berths yet, but I suspect they will eventually, as it's money
in the bank. From what I've seen in Florida, most canal homes with
docks have empty docks. It was the same in Cape Coral, but I haven't
been there for years.

--Vic

Don't most of those waterfront condo developments build marinas?
Maybe not boatyards, but at least berths?
I didn't look close, but it seemed that in Punta Gorda dockage
increased when they put up condos. They may not be renting
out the berths yet, but I suspect they will eventually, as it's money
in the bank. From what I've seen in Florida, most canal homes with
docks have empty docks. It was the same in Cape Coral, but I haven't
been there for years.

--Vic

Maybe the Japanese are buying it all up like Hawaii.... it's probably the
Chinese this time around. hooray for NAFTA!

Yes, they put in slips. And the slips sell for $400,000+.

But the ones at those two sites are for residents of the condos only.



"Vic Smith" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:37:05 GMT, "NOYB" wrote:

This has been happening in Southwest Florida for the past 10 years...and
in
Southeast Florida for longer than that.

It just started happening in the Keys a couple of years ago, but
fortunately
the real estate market took a hit and slowed things down.

I had a boat stored at a marina that leased the land, and the landlord
decided not to re-lease the property *at any price*. They sold it for $20
million to Eco-Group...a large developer out of Tampa.

Same thing happened to two other marinas in Naples in the past 3 years.

Don't most of those waterfront condo developments build marinas?
Maybe not boatyards, but at least berths?
I didn't look close, but it seemed that in Punta Gorda dockage
increased when they put up condos. They may not be renting
out the berths yet, but I suspect they will eventually, as it's money
in the bank. From what I've seen in Florida, most canal homes with
docks have empty docks. It was the same in Cape Coral, but I haven't
been there for years.

--Vic

On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:00:13 -0500, Vic Smith
wrote:

It was the same in Cape Coral, but I haven't
been there for years.

Depends. Most of my neighbors are active boaters, some of us with two
or three boats.

On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:37:05 GMT, "NOYB" wrote:

Same thing happened to two other marinas in Naples in the past 3 years.

And to a large full service ship yard in Ft Myers, recently replaced
by high rise condos.

The marina at Wiggins Pass had the only full service marina with travel lift
between Naples Bay and Fort Myers Beach.

It was a shame when that closed.


"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:37:05 GMT, "NOYB" wrote:

Same thing happened to two other marinas in Naples in the past 3 years.

And to a large full service ship yard in Ft Myers, recently replaced
by high rise condos.

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:51:15 GMT, "NOYB" wrote:

The marina at Wiggins Pass had the only full service marina with travel lift
between Naples Bay and Fort Myers Beach.

It was a shame when that closed.

Absolutely. As competition dwindles the yards that are left will be
able to charge as much as they want and wait times for haul outs will
get longer. Even now it's like trying to get an appointment with a
Florida dermatologist.

Wayne.B wrote:
On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:51:15 GMT, "NOYB" wrote:

The marina at Wiggins Pass had the only full service marina with travel lift
between Naples Bay and Fort Myers Beach.

It was a shame when that closed.

Absolutely. As competition dwindles the yards that are left will be
able to charge as much as they want and wait times for haul outs will
get longer. Even now it's like trying to get an appointment with a
Florida dermatologist.


When my father died, I had to decide whether I wanted to "inherit and
run" his marina in Milford, CT, or sell it. I gave it a full minute's
worth of thought, and then told our family lawyer, "sell it." My father
died in the early Spring. We immediately notified the customers the
marina would be closing the day after labor day. We had a buyer in early
summer, and closed in October of that year. The next spring, the marina
building was demolished, the dockage was sold off, and construction
began on condos.

Never once regretted the decision to sell. Never went back to see how
the project turned out.

Gave less than a minute's real thought to selling the boat store, which
was in a separate location. Once the inventory was sold off, the store
was put up for sale. The property sold, the store was razed, and there's
a strip mall there now.

"HK" wrote in message
...
Wayne.B wrote:
On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:51:15 GMT, "NOYB" wrote:

The marina at Wiggins Pass had the only full service marina with travel
lift between Naples Bay and Fort Myers Beach.

It was a shame when that closed.

Absolutely. As competition dwindles the yards that are left will be
able to charge as much as they want and wait times for haul outs will
get longer. Even now it's like trying to get an appointment with a
Florida dermatologist.


When my father died, I had to decide whether I wanted to "inherit and run"
his marina in Milford, CT, or sell it. I gave it a full minute's worth of
thought, and then told our family lawyer, "sell it." My father died in the
early Spring. We immediately notified the customers the marina would be
closing the day after labor day. We had a buyer in early summer, and
closed in October of that year. The next spring, the marina building was
demolished, the dockage was sold off, and construction began on condos.

Never once regretted the decision to sell. Never went back to see how the
project turned out.

Gave less than a minute's real thought to selling the boat store, which
was in a separate location. Once the inventory was sold off, the store was
put up for sale. The property sold, the store was razed, and there's a
strip mall there now.

I just wish that more people in your situation considered selling it to
someone who wanted to buy the marina and keep it as a marina.

Usually these sales take place behind the scenes, and it'd be nice if the
seller actually spent some time to find a buyer who chose to preserve the
business that his parents built.

In the case of the marina at Wiggins Pass, a large developer (Eco-Group) out
of Tampa bought the property before anybody else even knew it was for sale.
The company that ran the marina operation also has a large marina on Marco
Island, but they were leasing the land in Naples. They would have bought
that property in a New York minute if it was offered to them, but it was
never offered to them.

The county tried to buy the property to keep it running as a marina, but the
buyer/developer said that it wasn't for sale "at any price".