$43.5M rebuild of Clearwater Beach Marina gets first approval

CLEARWATER — The city is preparing to begin a rebuild of the dilapidated Clearwater Beach marina, but it will cost 2½ times more than the estimate cited when design started in 2021.

The price to replace the 165-slip marina has ballooned to $43.5 million, well above the $18 million budget set at the beginning of design three years ago, following increases in construction costs and changes to the project’s scope.

Still, city officials are stressing the need to replace the marina that is central to the beach economy, but is in a state of “catastrophic disrepair,” as city attorney David Margolis put it. Although the marina is a focal point of Clearwater Beach tourism, with fishing charters, dinner cruises and excursions, the infrastructure has not been replaced in 59 years.

“Yes, it’s a lot of money, but it’s an investment we have to make,” Mayor Bruce Rector said.

The council voted unanimously on Thursday to approve the price with the project’s construction manager, Kokolakis Contracting of Tarpon Springs. But the project will require a second vote at the council’s July 15 meeting because it includes an $18 million funding shortfall.

The deficit is being covered with a no-interest loan from the city’s capital projects fund, which finance director Jay Ravins expects could be repaid in 10 to 20 years with revenue from marina operations and any grants that can be secured.

Pinellas County’s Tourist Development Council has budgeted a $10 million grant for the marina, which will go toward loan repayment if the funding is ultimately approved, Ravins said.

The remainder of the rebuild is being covered by $23 million in Penny for Pinellas sales tax revenue, $4.7 million from marina revenue and $750,000 from the general fund.

If the construction costs are approved July 15, work is slated to begin in October, with a completion goal of May 2026.

Along with the steady increase in the cost for materials and construction, the project has been affected by changes to the design. The city added a seawall replacement in 2022 at a cost of $4 million. Also that year, then-marine and aviation director Eric Gandy discovered that the marina had been in a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers federal channel since 1960.

In order to legally rebuild, Gandy worked with members of Congress to get one sentence in a 395-page waterway bill to deauthorize the channel in 2023.

Jeff Walker, Clearwater’s senior project manager, said the marina’s utilities are obsolete and have to be turned off at high tide so cables and wiring don’t come in contact with water. The fixed timber docks are cracked and deteriorating and the seawall is failing, he said.

In the rebuild, the seawall will be elevated to respond to rising sea levels.

The 58 commercial operators will have fixed docks along the new marina’s perimeter, but the remaining recreational fleet will be moored on three floating aluminum docks to further resiliency efforts, Walker said.

The design also includes the creation of a Marina Walk promenade with shade structures, public art and ticket kiosks, which Walker said will help alleviate pedestrian congestion along Coronado Drive.

These ticket kiosks will replace the booths currently in front of individual boat slips for businesses, as those booths haven’t complied with county code since the 1990s.

Demolition and construction will be done in phases, with recreational boats removed during construction to keep commercial vessels in operation, Walker said.

Chad Haggert, captain of the Double Eagle Deep Sea Fishing charter, said while the rebuild is critical, tenants are worried about having enough parking.

To make room for the promenade, the surface lot will lose 38 parking spaces in the rebuild for a total of 366.

And because the existing parking lot will be used for construction staging, Walker said the city has received permission from the Florida Department of Transportation to use the west end of the Clearwater Memorial Causeway for 200 temporary parking spots.

The project does not currently include a parking garage, but Marine and Aviation Director Michael MacDonald said staff is now conducting a traffic study to pursue one.

“The marina not only is in dire need of reconstruction, which is going to be a good thing, but it’s been in dire need for decades of additional parking,” Haggert told the council.