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The American boatbuilding
industry is facing a lot of challenges these days, including increasingly
strict environmental regulations that add to the cost of building boats,
escalating labor and material prices that also make boats more expensive,
rising fuel prices, and competition from foreign boatbuilders.
While domestic builders
are generally aware of these problems and in most cases are taking steps
to cope with them, there’s another challenge that they’re failing
to address: the lack of boat slips. In many parts of the country—especially
Southern California and the Northeast—a dearth of slips has throttled
boat sales, and the problem is now rearing its head in locales once considered
awash in marinas, like parts of Florida and the southeast.
Excuse me for sounding
persecuted, but I feel like this problem is stalking me. I lived in San
Diego when slips were plentiful and cheap, then watched as marina construction
failed to keep pace with demand, until the situation got so bad that today
a boat owner must give up the slip with the boat in order to sell it.
Then in the late 1980s I moved to Connecticut, where the situation has
similarly deteriorated to the point that when I called around looking
for a new slip in the Stamford-Norwalk area this spring, the folks at
the marinas either laughed at me or refused to even return my phone call.
When I talk to boatbuilders
about this problem, they admit a crisis is coming but insist there’s
nothing they can do about it. Everyone says the problem is environmental
regulations and a diminishing supply of waterfront property. So while
the National Marine Manufacturers Association funds a campaign to encourage
new people to get into boating, no one is thinking about where we’ll
put them.
Someone needs to address
this problem, and perhaps it should be the boatbuilding companies themselves.
Boatbuilders need to get into the marina-development business if they
want to keep selling boats, and one is doing just that. Azimut-Benetti
is funding a huge marina-development project in Livorno, Italy. Actually,
calling it a marina-development project hardly does it justice. For it
has five components: a megayacht shipyard, sales and yacht-management
center, maintenance and service facility, marina, and—here’s
the beauty—an “urban regeneration project.” That’s
right. Azimut-Benetti is converting a large parcel of underutilized commercial
property (an old shipyard) into a high-end complex complete with luxurious
waterfront residences and high-end shops.
Think of all the derelict
commercial waterfront there is on our East Coast. You have to believe
that local governments would fall all over themselves to bring a similar
project to their town, one that would convert a tax drain into a tax-producing
asset. Not only are governments likely to look favorably on such a project,
they’d likely offer financial incentives and help with environmental
agencies. Best of all, developers will make money off such projects.
Why should you care
about this when you already have a slip? Supply and demand. As long as
more boaters are looking for fewer slips, prices will rise. They already
have, and that’s just the beginning. Azimut-Benetti is showing us
one way to deal with the problem in Italy. Someone should do the same
over here.
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