Ready to go vertical

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, February 1, 2007

EVERETT – There’s been a lot of talk about condominiums at the $400 million redevelopment of the Everett waterfront, but the first real signs of the change will be a boat storage and sales and repair center.

The co-owners of Bayside Marine, Jeff Lalone and Dan Hatch, held a groundbreaking ceremony on the $4.5 million project Wednesday, but workers are already way past that stage.

“We’ve poured about 300 yards of concrete into the footings and those are all done,” LaLone said Thursday. “All the steel for the building is sitting there and they’re getting ready to do the slab.

Hatch and LaLone expect the new storage building to go up quickly after its concrete floor is poured. The storage building should be ready by early April, they said.

LaLone said there is strong response to the storage area, with 90 people putting down deposits for 150 storage slips. He said those deposits were collected while the facility was still just a concept. “Once people start seeing the steel in the air and it’s a reality,” more deposits are expected, LaLone said.

Bayside will be the anchor tenant of what developer Maritime Trust is calling the Craftsman District, an area near the marina that will play host to boating-related businesses.

Hatch and LaLone said they had a lot of doubts at first but now are very excited about the project and their part of it.

“We went from feeling we were being pushed out to saying ‘What an opportunity.’” LaLone said.

“We are so grateful for the port having a vision and for allowing us to share that vision,” Hatch said. “And for allowing us to have this vision,” added LaLone, whose uncle started the business 40 years ago.

In the Wednesday ceremony, some 130 attendees signed a steel beam that will go into the new building. Then Hatch and LaLone produced a $1 million check for the contractor from a family-made “Really Big Checkbook.”

The timeline for the project should see the new boat repair building being completed in June, which LaLone said is an awfully busy time in the boat business.

“We didn’t want to move in June,” he said. “But the customers won’t see the craziness.”