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Boaters rejoice as council approves plans to add more, economical slips
By Marthe Stinton, mstinton@starlocalnews.com
It might be the end of the season, but in preparation for next spring and summer the city council has voted to allow smaller boat slips to be built at Hidden Cove Marina.
Plains Capital Bank, lenders for the development at Hidden Cove Park, submitted a request to change the sizes of the boat slips at Hidden Cove Marina. They also asked to change the configuration of the marina by adding the remaining slips required to the existing docks, rather than adding two new docks.
"The council gave them permission to rearrange the size of the boat slips, there will still be the same number of boat slips, but the smaller slips are more marketable right now," said Troy Powell, city manager. "The current slips are selling out so the council allowed them to change the site plan to put in more of the smaller slips than the bigger ones."
The proposed configuration will keep them within their lease boundaries, reduce exposure from the fetch of the lake and will meet the slip rental demand by meeting capacity in a shorter amount of time. The approved changes will not affect their agreements with the city; they still have to have 76 more slips to meet that requirement.
The initial agreement required MarineQuest to construct 340 boat slips for lease, 10 slips for storage of rental boats and 17 courtesy slips for individuals using the park and amenities. The original layout for the marina included 9 docks to accommodate all of the slips. The new layout will reduce the number of nine docks to seven, adding more slips to each dock.
According to city documents, Plains Capital and MarineQuest said the plans needed to change due to the economic climate, which has caused a decrease of demand for larger slips.
Plains Capital Bank, lenders for the development at Hidden Cove Park, submitted a request to change the sizes of the boat slips at Hidden Cove Marina. They also asked to change the configuration of the marina by adding the remaining slips required to the existing docks, rather than adding two new docks.
"The council gave them permission to rearrange the size of the boat slips, there will still be the same number of boat slips, but the smaller slips are more marketable right now," said Troy Powell, city manager. "The current slips are selling out so the council allowed them to change the site plan to put in more of the smaller slips than the bigger ones."
The proposed configuration will keep them within their lease boundaries, reduce exposure from the fetch of the lake and will meet the slip rental demand by meeting capacity in a shorter amount of time. The approved changes will not affect their agreements with the city; they still have to have 76 more slips to meet that requirement.
The initial agreement required MarineQuest to construct 340 boat slips for lease, 10 slips for storage of rental boats and 17 courtesy slips for individuals using the park and amenities. The original layout for the marina included 9 docks to accommodate all of the slips. The new layout will reduce the number of nine docks to seven, adding more slips to each dock.
According to city documents, Plains Capital and MarineQuest said the plans needed to change due to the economic climate, which has caused a decrease of demand for larger slips.
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