Marina tenants are back in their slips and the community of Coronado, in southern California, is enjoying over $9 million in improvements to their waterfront. A major objective of the improvement project was to ensure safe public access at the marina. “The old docks had exceeded their life – there were flotation problems and cases where docks were turning over,” said Jim Benson, city engineer. Improvements included replacement of two of the marina’s three main docks with modern concrete floating docks.

No slips were lost during the renovation and a new design layout created a better mix of slips. The new marina has 66 slips accommodating boats 25 – 100 feet in length. “It’s difficult to keep the number of slips unchanged when doing a rebuild,” said Eric Noegel, Manager of Project Development for Bellingham Marine. “New regulations and trends toward larger boats often mean a reduction in the number of slips; we were fortunate at Glorietta Bay to be able to deliver a slip mix that reflected a shift toward larger slips without losing any numbers.”

Bellingham Marine was hired as the design/build contractor to renovate the facility including design and installation of a Unifloat dock system with up-graded utilities; management of pile driving activities; and installation of a new fire suppression, fresh water, and public pump-out system. Bellingham also constructed a new entry pier complete with security gate and ADA compliant gangway.

The Glorietta Bay Marina project featured a number of innovative features including match-cast technology on landing platforms, a number of uniquely shaped dock modules with dog-legs in many walkways, and development of a 17,500 square foot eelgrass habitat located a half-mile away. The new habitat was created to replace habitat lost during the waterfront improvement project. Eelgrass supports a complex ecosystem in the San Diego Bay area. “This project had a number of unique needs and challenges. Bellingham Marine delivered a successful project by closely managing the project and planning for the project’s needs from the beginning,” said Jerome Torres, Senior Management Analyst for the City of Coronado.

Coronado is a small island town in San Diego Bay, approximately 7.4 square miles in size. Downtown Coronado has a number of unique shops and restaurants. The island also boasts an award-winning beach, recently ranked 2nd in the country by the Travel Channel.

As the world’s leading marina design/build construction company, Bellingham Marine produces Unifloat saltwater systems, Unideck freshwater systems and Unistack dry storage systems for marinas worldwide.

Bellingham Marine, P.O. Box 8, Bellingham, WA 98227; ph. 360-676-2800, fax. 360-734-2417, email. bmi@bellingham-marine.com

Unifloat, Unideck and Unistack are registered trademarks of Bellingham Marine.