Renovations at the Chestertown marina are nearing completion – just in time for Downrigging weekend.
At the Chestertown Council meeting Oct. 15, Mayor Chris Cerino updated the council on progress of the work, with help of a slide show “photo essay” including before-and-after photos and relevant figures. “This is a very ambitious project for a town of our size,” he said, “probably the most ambitious capital project we’ve ever undertaken.”
Cerino began with a reminder of the reasons the town decided to purchase the marina for roughly $2 million in April of 2012. Primary among them was the desire to preserve public access to the river, which would be jeopardized if the facility were converted to condos – its likely fate if it remained in private hands. Also, the marina represents an important part of the town’s history as a port , dating all the way to its founding in 1706. And the town’s ability to obtain government grants and other funding not available to private parties made the purchase easier to justify. Cerino said the marina was essentially operating at a break-even level before the current round of repairs.
The vitality of the marina and the adjacent waterfront are important keys to the economic health of the town, which is tied in many ways to its ability to attract tourists. “It’s a critical facility for two of our largest tourist events, Tea Party and Downrigging,” he said, noting that the latter festival would not be possible without a functional marina. And with Washington College expanding its presence on the waterfront, the upgrading of the marina makes even more sense, he said.
When the town purchased the marina, Cerino said, “There was not one square foot of this site that didn’t have major, major problems.” Among the issues that needed to be addressed were deterioration of the docks and bulkheads – the latter of which he said were “essentially nonexistent” — and persistent flooding of the parking lot. Cerino said the flooding, which occurs during high tides or after storms, has been worse this year than he has ever seen in 25 years living here. To remedy the flooding, the parking lot and adjacent boardwalks have been raised nearly two feet. Concrete retaining walls have been added to prevent the fill from being washed away by stormwater runoff or extreme high tides. At one point during the bulkhead replacement, the town brought in a diver so the work could be continued during high tide.
While flooding has been a major problem on the land side of the marina, the boat slips faced the opposite problem, with silting reducing the depth of many of the slips to the point they were unusable. The entire boat basin has been dredged to provide a minimum 6-foot depth – and by extending the piers, the marina now offers a significant number of slips at 12 to 18 feet deep. Cerino said the availability of these slips makes the Chestertown marina one of only a few in the state, and one of a very few on the Eastern Shore, able to handle boats that need that much depth. In the process, the town reduced the number of docks from four to three, compensating by extending the remaining docks by 70 feet – adding about 15 slips as a result. Additional finger piers have been added on the Cannon Street Dock and along the downriver side of the marina. The boat ramp and the travel lift have been retained, and the ramp has been widened and resurfaced.
The repaving of the parking lot provided an opportunity to move and expand the marina store. The old building has been demolished, and a small plaza with permeable pavers has been created in its location. The marina building is adjacent to Front Street and provides not only a marina store and information center, but bathrooms, showers and laundry facilities for boaters. It also includes a rental space, which Shore Rivers will occupy. In the process, additional boat and car parking has been added. A large shed on the Front Street side is to be taken down, and a pocket park planted in its place. Other landscaping is also in the plans.
Cerino stressed the amount of work that went into the refurbishing, noting that the marina was built on fill – including “Volkswagen-sized” chunks of concrete and stumps from 200-year-old trees – that had to be removed or worked around while driving the 70-foot pilings for the new piers and bulkheads. The new bulkheads are reinforced with industrial-grade vinyl sheeting. On the Scott’s Point side of the marina, the old bulkhead was still in “pretty good shape,” so the town simply raised its height about two feet and replaced the walkway.
While the level of the parking lot was being raised, Cerino said, the town took the opportunity to put a lot of infrastructure underground – new water and sewer lines, electrical lines, and stormwater drains. The walkway along the Cannon Street side was raised to the level of the pier, which Cerino said he had seen underwater only after Tropical Storm Isabella.
Cerino finished the update by showing the new configuration of the marina, starting with an aerial photo by Tyler Campbell, and walking the council through all the new features, including a photo of the walkways taken at 5 p.m. the day of the meeting. Among the newest improvements are a concrete walkway down Cannon Street to the docks, installed just last week, a new concrete walkway to the Fish Whistle restaurant, and new lighting outside the restaurant. “It’s really starting to take shape from the lay person’s point of view,” he said.
Challenges during the reconstruction included the weather – “If not the wettest year in Maryland history, it’s got to be in the top three or four,” he said. The presence of the restaurant – which remained open the entire time construction was going on – also affected the pace of work. The town had to bring in extra equipment to complete driving pilings through the fill. And working with several different contractors, four or more of whom might be on site at once, was also a challenge.
The town raised more than $5.753 million in grants, loans and private donations to pay for the work – “every bush that we could shake money out of,” Cerino said. He noted that state Senators Mike Miller and Addie Eckert helped the town gain funding from the state capital budget. “With the exception of the private donations, every one of those funds is a competitive grant,” he said. From these various sources, the town has raised 95 percent of the cost of the project.
In conclusion, Cerino said, “I’m kind of out of miracles here. I don’t think I can go back to the state legislature and get another half-a-million dollars.” He said the time had come for private donors – many of whom he said had asked when they could help with the project – to step up. “We really need to raise about $300,000 to pay for the work.” As an inducement, he listed a variety of naming opportunities, ranging from the marina building (at $250,000) to individual 6”-by-9” paving tiles (at $250 each). The plaza next to the restaurant was funded by the late Michael Lawrence, who asked that it be named Grassymeade Plaza after his farm.
Anyone interested in helping should contact Town Manager Bill Ingersoll. Cerino said he would be happy to show potential donors around the marina and help them identify possible naming opportunities. Donations to the town for the marina would be tax-deductible, he said. He said the campaign for donations would be on-going, at least until the middle of next year.
Cerino said he hoped to have an official ribbon-cutting at Tea Party next year at which time the various donors would be publicly recognized. He said there might also be a public event – “an ending charrette,” he called it — after Downrigging this year to let people see the progress now that the project is close to complete.
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