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Council may take action on marina
By LESTER R. DAILEY
| Article published on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 |
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CLEARWATER – Last year, Clearwater voters approved the construction of a downtown marina at the eastern end of the Memorial Causeway Bridge.
At their April 17 meeting the council members were to be asked to award a $10.5 million contract to Misener Marine Construction of Tampa to design and build the 132-slip facility.
If the contract is approved, the design and permitting will be finished by the end of this year, and construction is scheduled to end by June 30, 2009. But Councilman Paul Gibson feels that the project should be delayed until the economy improves.
At their April 14 work session, Gibson told his City Council colleagues that, in hard times, luxuries like boating are the first things people cut as they are forced to spend more of their money on necessities like food and gasoline. He said that many of the 459 people (with 115 duplicates) now on the waiting list for boat slips will disappear when it comes time to put up some money.
“Everybody tells me that we have all these (slip) reservations, but they’re just meaningless e-mails,” he said.
He advocated waiting until the economy improves before building the marina, so it is more likely to be self-supporting.
“If we make a mistake, this (money) is going to come out of our general fund,” Gibson warned, adding that that could mean cuts in the police, fire and library budgets.
To make matters worse, the $12.9 million cost of the completed project is $2.1 million higher than previously estimated. Part of the cost overrun was due to an upgrade to the marina’s electrical system, and the rest is attributable to the soaring cost of materials. The price of copper electrical wiring, for example, has doubled in the past year.
The docks will be made in Finland by a company called Marinetek, so the cost of transporting them to Clearwater has risen sharply. And they are made of concrete-covered polystyrene, a petroleum product whose price has skyrocketed.
Luckily, the city has received a $1.2 million federal grant that wasn’t included in the original calculations, and the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency has agreed to kick in an additional $1 million. The city also will receive a state grant that was included in the original calculations.
“If it weren’t for the CRA money, the federal grant and the state grant, we couldn’t go forward,” Mayor Frank Hibbard said. “I think the intangibles of this (project) will be very good for our downtown, but I’m concerned about the economy right now.”
He added, however, that some people balked at paying $68 million to build the new Memorial Causeway Bridge and urged officials to wait in the hope that prices would decrease. But if the bridge construction had been delayed until now, it would cost at least $140 million.
“We’re in a … recession, even though the federal government doesn’t want to admit it,” Vice Mayor George Cretekos said.
But he said that the economy will improve and the marina should be built in preparation for better times.
Gibson asked the city’s finance department to revise the projected revenue figures for the marina so the council will be able to make a more informed decision.
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Article published on Wednesday, April 16, 2008
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