Two years ago the Palm Harbor Marina near West Palm Beach spent a $20 million on construction to attract Superyachts to the city’s revitalised waterfront.
Now the city plans to replace the nearby Flagler Memorial Bridge and in do so will hem in the marina’s north pier costing the marina millions in lost docking revenues.
The Florida Department of Transportation and the city are working to settle the dispute, but the proposed route of the new bridge, skirting just to the south of the 75-year-old one, cannot be shifted, they say.
The $94 million project for Flagler Memorial, the northernmost of three bridges connecting West Palm and Palm Beach, is scheduled for completion in December 2014.
The bridge, built in 1938, was deemed “structurally deficient” and “functionally obsolete” in 2006, prompting plans to rebuild it.
But a spokeswoman for the marina’s parent company said the replacement bridge would cut into a section of the Lake Worth Lagoon that the marina rents from the city and make it hard to navigate to the dock.
That makes the passage too narrow boats that were supposed to use that dock, said Cheryl Chase, executive vice president of Chase Enterprises, the marina’s parent company. “The way the present design is proposed, the bridge would be less than 100 feet from our northernmost dock and we need it to be 150 for our two-way navigable channels.”
An alternative, allowing more slips to be built on the far side of the marina, could be a regulatory headache but is under consideration. The marina is on land subleased from the city, but the state controls submerged lands, which means various Florida agencies might have to approve any marina expansion.
Source The Palm Beach Post
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