What is happening with the Woodbine Marina?

The seemingly cursed Woodbine Marina was grabbing headlines again this week as Village trustees voted to authorize a new aquaculture program that will enable scientists – and high school students – to grow oysters between the pilings designed to anchor the facility’s floating docks.

It was the first bit of good news to come out of the dilapidated site in months.

For what seems like an eternity, the marina south of the playground on Woodbine Avenue has sat in shambles, evidence of a tumultuous past that has led to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit for the Town of Huntington (TOH) and an eyesore in the heart of Northport Village harbor. Wander down there today and you can still see pieces from the original marina, which was destroyed during winter storms over the last few years.

While the aquaculture project is worth celebrating, Village Trustee Dave Weber said the bigger story is that there’s no quick fix for the marina as a whole, which means it likely will remain a mess for some time.

“Whether we like it or not, we’re going to be dealing with this for years,” said Weber, who has become a vocal advocate of intelligent growth along the waterfront. “It seems that the only solution at this point might be to not have a marina there at all.”

The oyster operation is a good interim project. According to Weber, the aquaculture will allow for harvesting and work to eliminate nitrogen in harbor water, as bivalves are good filters. The Village will be offering internships to local high school students, and the Village will have no rent or maintenance costs from the Town.

Ed Smyth, a councilman with the TOH, said the aquaculture system is known as a Floating Upweller System, or a FLUPSY.

Smyth noted that the system comprises floating cages into which participants can submerge baskets to grow the oysters. Average growth of the critters is about one millimeter a week. Eventually, the oysters might even be sold for profit, mirroring models used elsewhere in the United States.

“There are 63 miles of waterfront in the Town of Huntington and it’s all vital to the economic well-being of our town,” Smyth said. “Until we’re ready to act on the marina, we’re doing the best we can.”

What went wrong

It’s not hyperbolic to describe the Woodbine Marina saga as a debacle.

The story goes back all the way to 2011, when the TOH hired engineering company L.K. McLean Associates and dock manufacturer Bellingham Marine to design and build the new docks. Over the years that followed, the Town spent $1.8 million to bring the 46-slip marina to life.

At the time, locals with even rudimentary knowledge of boating and the harbor expressed skepticism that the design of the project would be able to withstand the swell of winter storms. While the project later incorporated an outer dock that could act as a wavebreak and remain in the water year-round, many feared the dock would not actually work against bigger waves.

Peter Houmere, managing partner at Britannia Yachting Center at the south end of the harbor, said he remembers being “dumbfounded” by what engineers thought they could achieve.

“The whole thing was a terrible mistake,” he said. “Everybody who lives in town knows what the harbor is capable of producing in terms of ocean swell. Any of the people in town could have told them they didn’t build this to the specifications they would have needed.”

Nevertheless, construction continued.

The marina opened in 2014 and almost immediately started falling apart. In 2016, the TOH hired the developers to add new “protections,” but those failed as well. The marina sustained its worst damage during storms in 2018, 2019, and 2020, and was taken out of commission last spring.

All told, the TOH spent an additional $200,000 on repairs, bringing the price tag to $2 million, or more than $46,000 of taxpayer money per slip. In recent months town officials have estimated it would now cost $3.5 million to rebuild the marina with only 35 slips, effectively a cost to taxpayers of $100,000 per slip.

Most experts said the marina needs wave-attenuating docks, which basically are docks with keels on them and serve to break apart waves when the waves hit.

The problem with the Woodbine Marina site isn’t only the docks; the bulkhead is in need of repair, too.

Town of Huntington Supervisor Chad Lupinacci and other town leaders proposed funding for bulkhead remediation at the February 2021 Town Board meeting, but the resolution failed because they only had three votes and four votes are needed for bonding resolutions.

Northport Mayor Damon McMullen declined multiple requests for comment about the marina.

What’s next

Currently, the TOH is suing McLean and Bellingham for damages.

The lawsuit, filed this year, calls for more than $1,000,000 in compensatory damages from each of the involved parties. It cites breach of contract, negligence and misrepresentation of expertise, failures in calculations and design, and other deficiencies that have resulted in costly damage, dangerous, unsafe and hazardous conditions, and lost revenue to the TOH.

With the exception of the aquaculture project, there isn’t much that can happen at the marina site until the lawsuit moves forward. Town of Huntington spokesperson Lauren Lembo said she expects more news on the lawsuit later this year.

In the meantime,TOH and Village officials said they may pursue other options to improve the site.

One of the possibilities: Add parking meters to the marina’s 23-spot parking lot, which is prime real estate on the waterfront downtown. The lot has never been metered, but Smyth said that adding parking meters could generate enough revenue to pay down the bond that the TOH is still paying for original construction of the marina.

“It’s not going to eliminate the debt overnight, but it certainly would help,” he said.

Smyth added that the town’s Maritime Services Department would be the likely candidate to administer operation of new meters in the lot.

Locals also have discussed reopening the bathroom facilities in the lot next to Northport Village Park. When the marina was open, the bathrooms were for marina users only (they each had a key). Since then, town officials have reached out to the Village to see if there is interest in the Village maintaining and stocking the bathrooms as they do for the public bathrooms at the other end of the park across Main Street. This sort of arrangement would require an intermunicipal agreement.

Again, McMullen declined to comment.

As for the marina itself, officials have wondered whether it’s sensible to rebuild at all.

Houmere, from Britannia, noted that the Town likely would have to get federal or state dollars to rebuild, and added that no rebuild would make sense without dredging the harbor to allow for more volume and bigger boats.

Weber, who owns Seymour’s Boatyard north of the Village park gazebo, said the best solution may be to invest in other ideas.

“I think you can build a partial marina with transient dockage that you take out every winter before the storms, something with the ability for recreational use, kayak rentals, that sort of thing,” he said. “Maybe a waterfront restaurant that’s only open in summer. It’s a great spot. Just not for a marina.”