At the Association of Marina Industries Conference and Expo this week, Suntex Marinas announced an initiative inviting marina partners to foster a more productive partnership between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the marina segment. The corps manages nearly 257,000 outdoor facilities in 43 states.
“The goal is to form a coalition with all marina owners and operations, including Suntex, Safe Harbor, all the other institutional investors as well as the mom and pops and government-owned marinas,” Suntex CEO Bryan Redmond told Trade Only Today. “All of us are kind of in this thing together.”
Suntex owns 59 marinas and 45 of them are the subject of a lease or a riparian right of entitlement with a federal, state or county agency. Most of the 45 marinas are a hybrid with a portion of the marina owned in fee simple and a portion subject to lease or riparian rite of entitlement. The company hopes to bring together the National Marine Manufacturers Association and AMI along with marina owners to work on two fronts: The first is to support the LAKES Act that would let the corps of engineers reinvest collected fees into the operations and maintenance of recreation access points. This would provide an asset for the agency to maintain high-use infrastructure and facilities. The second is to create new legislation to address longer lease terms and renewal options for marina concessions under the corps of engineers.
The LAKES Act would let the corps of engineers retain 80% of recreational fees collected on-site for operations and maintenance at a given location. The USACE could also form partnerships with local nonprofits, handle partner-connected fees and return them to the partner jointly managing the recreation facility to reinvest onsite
The USACE has regional, district and lake offices. Revenues collected from recreation go to the general fund. Then the money comes back to the corps through appropriations. Other agencies like the national parks service get a return on the money they earn.
Regarding the leases with the USACE, Redmond explained that the leases almost always renew, but his company would prefer to have the opportunity to extend them before they expire. That would add value in the eyes of investors and make them more comfortable committing to a facility.
“We’re trying to create a way to better the public-private partnership and give the current operators and owners of all these marinas, including the mom-and-pops, access to more institutional capital,” said Redmond. “And the best way we believe to do that is if we can come together and talk about what works well and what we could do better.”
He continued, “This is going to allow for more institutional capital to want to invest in these marinas and it checks their boxes of things they’re looking for and it creates more simple processes for them to get comfortable.”
