EVERETT – The owners of Bayside Marine have completed their plans and financing for a $4 million boat retail center and service facility on the community’s waterfront.
The new Bayside center will be the anchor tenant of the Craftsman District portion of a $300 million redevelopment project by the Port of Everett and Maritime Trust of Chicago. The building will likely be among the first completed for the project. Work is expected to begin this fall and be finished by spring.
“It’s a neat growth time for us,” said Jeff LaLone, a co-owner of the company. “But we were forced into it. They’re going to tear us down to the parking lot.”
For Bayside, owned by LaLone and Dan Hatch, the redevelopment will let them unite a boat-service business now in several buildings and to enlarge it to meet demand.
“We were just grown out,” LaLone said. “We’re bulging at the seams.”
Hatch noted the company is continually turning down requests to put boats in dry storage.
He said the new facility will allow 150 boats up to 36 feet in total length, meaning the largest boats will likely be 32-footers with some gear extending in the front or back. The storage facility will be serviced by a special forklift that can move the boats back and forth and even have them cleaned in an automatic shower system before they’re placed in storage.
LaLone said the company has even devised a system that will allow it to have the boat owner’s car driven onto a pallet, then placed by forklift in the boat’s storage slot to keep it safe and clean while the owner is on a trip.
LaLone said about 85 people have already placed deposits down for a storage spot.
“We really expect to be 100 percent full when we open in March,” he said.
In addition to dry storage, the building will include seven service bays set up to have the boats delivered by forklift.
“We’re the prime service area already,” Hatch said of boats on the Everett waterfront. “We have all intentions to continue to be the place to be.”
The remainder of the building will include a retail area for boats, motors and parts and a small restaurant or food service area.
LaLone said the facility will be 55,000 square feet, with 35,000 for storage, 10,000 for service and the remainder for retail.
The building will be a major portion of what the developers are calling the Craftsman District, an area designed for retailers and repair companies to service the boating community. It will be near the new marina for large vessels being built by the port and adjacent to a work yard and other port facilities.
LaLone and Hatch said that when the redevelopment project was first proposed, they were concerned about how it would all work and whether they could afford to remain in business there. They said they still don’t know what their rent will be, but they’re feeling much more confident about the project.
“This whole area was never designed to be what it is,” LaLone said, speaking from his office near the former yacht club building that was turned into a port conference center. As he talked last week, the port’s Travelift, a huge machine that lifts boats out of the water in a cradle, drove past his office down the road toward the conference center. Cars trailed in its wake.
“We’ve got the largest marina on the West Coast and we need to support that efficiently,” LaLone said.
The new facilities should do that.
Herald writer Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459 or benbow@heraldnet.com.
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