STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

More All

• Talkin’ Turkey: the turkey, the pilgrims and the noble bird of Collier County
• Turkey trivia test your wish bone
• How chefs celebrate Thanksgiving

Share and Enjoy [?]

The entrepreneurs who plan to transform Naples Marina into luxury dockominiums paid $26.8 million this month to purchase the 11-acre North Road property. Within four months, about 500 remaining boat storage renters will be forced to buy a dockominium or look elsewhere for a marina or storage facility.

The sale translates into good news for 28 Avion Park homeowners, who have had to contend with noise and other problems at the nearby Naples Municipal Airport. They will be able to use many of the new Naples Harbour Yacht Club’s amenities through a free “social membership” to the five-star facility and also will be offered a discounted, joint commercial rate to have their dock areas dredged.

A deed filed July 7 in the Collier County Clerk of Court shows James Jentgen, president of Progeny II Corp., received $26.814 million for the property near Naples Airport off Airport-Pulling Road. Jentgen purchased the marina from a bank in 1993 for $1.575 million after the marina went bankrupt.

Loan papers also show the buyer, Naples Marina Investments, borrowed $199,931,719 from iStar Financial Inc. of New York to finance the Naples Marina deal, as well as two other marina purchases in Tampa and Key West. The storage leases and purchase agreements for the new marina were used as collateral. Lee County entrepreneur Steeven Knight, one of Naples Marina Investments’ three partners, said $60 million will be used to build the Naples Marina, which will be complete 14 to 16 months after construction starts.

Impending construction means that renters at the marina who initially were offered a discounted $121,500 price must now pay $135,000 to $174,000 or find a new boat storage facility. Many have opted to find slips or storage elsewhere.

“I have a $25,000 boat. To turn around and pay $120,000 for a (dockominium) just isn’t economical,” said Eric Pilger, who will rent a space from a friend in Royal Harbour once he’s forced out.

Pilger, who stores his 20-foot Stingray in an outside unit, saw his rent go from $172 monthly to $216 now. Some saw their rents inside nearly triple.

However, Knight said he did not raise any rents and none were tripled, but that the marina raises its rental rates by 20 percent annually, which just occurred.

“There’s no incentive for me to jack the rent rates up and piss (renters) off,” Knight said, adding that such bad will would mean renters would be less likely to purchase. “I told (management) to change nothing, to go about business as usual.”

About 60 percent of his 127 buyers are former renters, Knight said. The discounted $121,500 price for renters and former deedholders ended July 1 after several extensions, Knight said, pointing out that most buyers are locals, but one who asked to remain anonymous purchased eight and plans to use one, lease others and sell them after they appreciate.

Naples Harbour Yacht Club will join six others, so far, in a plan that allows boaters to use reciprocal dockominiums at Sanibel Island, Sarasota, Tampa, New Smyrna Beach, Key West, Stuart, and Charleston, S.C. Knight also hopes to add Bahamas and Cancun dockominiums.

Naples has already lost Boat Haven and Wiggins Pass Marina to developers and boat storage space is decreasing — forcing boaters to store vessels on trailers and head to already crowded public boat ramps. With boat access shrinking, the state Legislature last year commissioned a $1.5 million study to evaluate public access to boat ramps and ways to preserve access.

In addition to the purchase price, dockominium buyers will pay $225 in monthly dues. The new club will feature 638 secure dry spaces. A full-time dockmaster and staff, unlimited boat service, 24-hour security, and amenities often seen at five-star hotels will be offered, as well as fuel, repair service, and deli items at wholesale prices. The boat sales facility that’s there now will close.

Unlike the dockominiums in Key West and Tampa, Knight said, a decision was made not to sell the 88 wet spaces in Naples, but to use them as a staging area, allowing boat owners to board and return to dock. “On a given weekend in Naples we could put in 80 to 90 boats a day,” Knight said.

The sale is the culmination of a legal battle that began last July, when Jentgen wrote deedholders to say their condominium association was dissolved. He offered to buy their storage units, saying he wanted to transform the marina into a rental-only facility and wanted to renovate. About half quickly sold.

The deedholders had paid $3,500 to $22,000 for a condominium association that allowed them to store their boats, use a forklift and docks at the marina. Some had owned their units for 20 years and thought they’d be there for life.

But over the years, Jentgen purchased deeds as people got older, died, or were interested in selling the dry storage units, eventually snapping up 95 percent. As the majority owner of the condo association, bylaws enabled Jentgen to vote last year to terminate the association without holding a meeting or alerting deedholders.

On Sept. 30, he wrote the remaining owners to say he’d no longer provide forklift service, but would let them use it once in October to remove their boats. With no way to get their vessels into the water, condominium owners were forced out, while renters remained. The condominium bylaws required deedholders to go to arbitration for a fair price, but they balked, eventually agreeing on a mediator after rejecting the $12,000 price with two years’ free storage Jentgen had offered.

Last month, after 11 hours of negotiations, deedholders settled on a price that was confidential. Deeds filed recently show they received $44,750 each for the 13 remaining units.

Knight said that situation would never occur at the new marina. “It takes 80 percent of its members to vote themselves out of a place to keep their boats,” he said. “That’s never going to happen.”

Maintaining marinas as rental facilities doesn’t make economic sense anymore, Knight said, because the rentals don’t pay enough. “You can’t afford to have a business on top of dirt that costs $30 million to run,” he said. “Contrary to the popular belief that privatization of marinas is killing boat access, it’s not. This will be a marina until eternity.”

Knight, whose partners are Rich McCanna of Homasassa and a Lee County silent partner, said a maintenance dredging permit already exists for that area of the Gordon River, but he hopes to obtain a permit allowing him to dredge to the Gordon River Bridge near Tin City.

His partners met with Avion Park homeowners and offered them a joint commercial rate to dredge their dock areas. That rate hasn’t been set, but Knight estimated it would be half what it would cost them as individual homeowners.

“We’re going to extend to them a social membership so they can use the facility,” he said, adding that boat storage would not be included, but that they could purchase wholesale fuel, use the clubhouse, lounge and deli and buy bait, among other amenities. “We call it the good neighbor policy.”

In Sanibel, Knight said, his company added curbs, sidewalks and resurfaced the roads for the neighboring homeowners, and would work with homeowners here. The Naples Marina will have waterfalls, a nice facade, and heavy landscaping.

“It can only be an advantage to neighbors to have an old rundown marina become a state-of-the-art facility,” he said. “It clearly will increase the value of their properties. ... If there’s something we could do for the neighborhood, we’d be happy to do it.”

Avion Park doesn’t have a homeowner association anymore, but Everett Thayer, the former president, said North Road will be widened and sidewalks added as part of the greenway trail along the Gordon River, work that will benefit the neighborhood and marina. He said residents are happy about the free memberships and believed some homeowners might sell their properties because they likely will appreciate.

“If they do what they’ve done in Sanibel, it would make the property more valuable,” Thayer said. “But if we get more airport noise, that will decrease values.”