Two companies are seeking to redevelop and operate the municipal marina on St. Petersburg’s downtown waterfront.
The city on Thursday publicly released the two proposals that had been submitted last week. Each promises profitable overhauls, but they differ in cost and scope.
One is a joint proposal from Safe Harbor Marinas and the Harborage Marina at Bayboro, which Safe Harbor operates. It is located a few blocks south of the municipal marina. The other pitch comes from Suntex Marinas.
Both companies have a national footprint — Safe Harbor owns 135 marinas around the country, while Suntex owns or manages 73 — and both run more than a dozen marinas in Florida. Both also run saltwater marinas, a city requirement after a previous effort to find a redeveloper-operator under former Mayor Rick Kriseman failed over the favorite’s lack of saltwaterexperience.
The Safe Harbor proposal begins with a five-year lease, a length favorable to the city because it wouldn’t require voter approval through a referendum. It would still need to be approved by six out of eight city council members.
The company would pay the city a total of $1.25 million up front for the five-year lease. After five years, it proposes, its payment to the city would be based on a percentage of its revenues, estimated at $678,000 in Safe Harbor’s sixth year at the helm and increasing to $1.2 million by year 10.
Estimates three years ago pegged the cost of redeveloping the marina at $30 million. Safe Harbor would put $48 million toward the project, according to the proposal. That includes new docks with additional space, a welcome center and a two-story “amenity center” with a lounge and exercise facility. It also involves a new restaurant on the site of Fresco’s Waterfront Bistro, which the city included in its request for proposals.
The Suntex proposal goes bigger. It says the company would invest about $70 million in the redevelopment, including more dockage than the Safe Harbor proposal, infrastructural overhauls, a two-story restaurant and changes to the public space around the marina, including a new plaza and athletic fields.
Rental payments to the city would be based on a percentage of revenue. In the first 10 years, according to the proposal, it projects that payment at $14.2 million, more than double Safe Harbor’s projected payments over the same time.
Unlike Safe Harbor, though, Suntex wants the kind of long lease that would require voter approval: 30 years, to be followed by two 25-year extensions.
Some of the more than 100 people who permanently live on boats at the marina have said they fear their rents — less than $1,000 a month, making it an affordable option in an increasingly hard to afford city — will spike when a private operator takes over.
The Suntex proposal says the city’s current rate for those residents is in line with the typical rates in the region, and that “the live-a-board fee will be competitively adjusted to reflect the future marina’s amenities.” Those residents would also “be subject to vessel relocations and customary construction and utility disruptions” during the redevelopment. The Safe Harbor proposal does not address current residents.
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A city report in 2014 found the marina was in need of extensive repairs. The search for a redeveloper-operator began in 2019, when Safe Harbor Marinas submitted an unsolicited proposal to redevelop the marina. It proposed taking on the cost of renovating the marina in exchange for the right to lease and operate it.
That triggered a city process to give other groups opportunities to submit offers. Kriseman’s pick — a proposal by Safe Harbor Development, a Tennessee-based company that’s different from Safe Harbor Marinas — got pushback from the marina’s boaters and never got the approval of a supermajority from City Council to go forward.
Mayor Ken Welch restarted the process to find a developer-operator in April. The request for proposals has no selection criteria and Welch will be the sole arbiter of the winning proposal, though staff will compile a strengths and weaknesses report.