Marina Dock Age, November 2000

Marinas: An Endangered Species?
by Dennis P. Kissman

Marinas, once considered stepchildren of the recreational marine industry, are now recognized as an integral part of the industry. Unfortunately, as marinas come to the forefront, more groups outside the marine industry are beginning to take note of what we are doing. This awareness is creating additional pressures on marinas, and, as a result, marinas are caught in a riptide of changing times.

From within the industry, boat manufacturers are designing boats that are beamier, making many existing marinas obsolete. Marina customers are demanding more amenities. They no longer are satisfied with just a place to store their boats. From outside the industry, environmentalists have targeted marinas as polluters and killers of endangered marine life. Last, but not least, regulatory agencies have no clue as to the nature of the marina business and thus try to group marinas into non-related industries for regulation purposes.

Faced with these obstacles, marina expansion, development, and even ongoing operations are in for some rough weather as we devote ourselves to survival. Without the growth and updating of marinas, boat manufacturers will not have places for their customers to keep the boats they buy. Granted, not all boats require a marina, but with the current trend in boat design and customer demand, as many as 25 percent of the existing berths and storage racks in the United States cannot accommodate the boat market. To the marina owner, this means he or she is faced with large capital outlays just to remain competitive in business. Further compounding this problem, once the marina owner decides to update his marina, he now subjects the entire marina to current environmental and governmental regulations that could make upgrading the marina cost-prohibitive, if not impossible.

Fueling the demand for boat storage is the fact that boats do not disappear. They just have a new face at the helm. Boats have a very long life cycle, particularly those requiring marinas. Thus, as new boats are sold, the overall boat population increases. In the United States in 1970, the total number of recreational boats owned was 8,814,000. By 1999, that population had grown close to 17,000,000, an increase of 91 percent in less than thirty years, while the areas to use these boats have not changed and will not change in the future. Continue »