Architect floats vision of buoyant future
The Sydney Morning Herald, 25/06/2011
A world in which houses bob on the water and boats usurp cars is not that fanciful, writes David Lockwood.
In a future shaped by rising sea levels, the boat supplants the car as everyday transport, the marina morphs into a satellite suburb floating on the water and seaweed is grown in backyard ponds in place of tomatoes on stakes.
This was the vision presented by the architect Brian Toyota, who was a speaker at Marinas 2011 in Melbourne during the week.
While dry stacks make clever use of waterfront land, marinas are also evolving into residential destinations, such as, say, the dashing new port of Airlie and its Boathouse apartments.
Toyota believes in a future where we live on the water and points to the low-lying, flood-prone areas around the Brisbane River – where residency comes with real risks – as being ideal for floating suburbs. In the US, actor Brad Pitt has had a hand in designing floating houses built on foam foundations that can rise up to four metres in a flood.
‘‘We can live on the water. It’s just a matter of taking the opportunities in the future,’’ says Toyota, who created Sanctuary Cove.
This may well be tomorrow’s marina, an attractive destination we won’t want to leave. And we’ll happily ditch the car and travel by boat to our front door instead.
Toyota’s vision was one of the highlights of the biennial Marinas conference, which attracted more than 250 participants and visionaries from eight countries.
The keynote speaker, Joe Ueberroth, the president of Bellwether Financial Group in the US, believes long-term investment in marinas will yield good returns. He should know. Ueberroth is also chairman of Bellingham Marine – the world’s most comprehensive marina builder – and founder and chairman of BellPort Group Inc, an international marina company.
Although there was a warning in his presentation about ‘‘investing in choppy waters’’, Ueberroth remains ‘‘cautiously bullish’’ about the marina industry. This is partly because of the transient nature of boats – that is, they can be moved around.
Ueberroth says he was amazed at the number of second-hand US boats now being loaded on ships in Florida and sent to Australia.
While these grey imports challenge segments of our marine industry, they create demand for services, slipways and berths. Pentup demand from the ageing population for boats with berths will also drive marina development.
Victorian government authorities at the conference talked up the trailerboat and ‘‘rack-and-stack’’ market – 96 per cent of all boats in the state are trailerable and fishing accounts for 85 per cent of on-water activity. They also spruiked further development of Melbourne’s Docklands, with more berths and a greater waterfront focus, thereby creating a community boat hub. A new heritage-boating precinct is part of the plan.
There are plenty of new marinas waiting to be built on Port Phillip Bay. Concepts have been drawn up for the Mornington Peninsula, Wyndham Cove, the Geelong waterfront and Frankston Harbour. Meanwhile, new marina developments in NSW are considerably more difficult to find, not least because of stricter government controls.
The former NSW minister for ports, Joe Tripodi, was among the public-sector speakers sharing their wisdom on working with governments. This is something marina operators are well versed in because of the industry’s huge government interface.
Other public servants spoke about sustainable development, which means creating marinas for today without adversely affecting the future.
A Queensland lawyer advocated the need for uniform leasing laws, while warning of rising costs (to be passed on to boaters by way of higher mooring fees no doubt) as a result of increasing regulatory controls and, especially, higher environmental standards.
Modern marina owners are already cleaning up their act. One marina operator in South Australia even has ISO 14001 accreditation, which means his marina doesn’t cause adverse changes to air, water or land.
While each presenter (including this writer) at the conference came at the subject of marinas from a different position, we all delivered the same message: marinas are no longer just parking lots for boats but community assets, coveted destinations and important social hubs.
As the end user – a boater – I pushed the importance of maintaining public access, providing personalised service and staging events for the wider community. At the same time, various marina operators shared their successes by way of their own private boat shows, festivals and themed soirees. The influence of a good resident restaurant – think Ormeggio at d’Albora on the Spit – also helps perceptions.
There’s now more good news for Sydneysiders. Stage two of the Bailey’s refuelling amenity at White Bay, where the old car-unloading docks were located, will be built by year’s end. This includes a dry stack – the first on Sydney Harbour – for boats up to about 10 metres long. There might be 130 kept in racks, with the balance on the hardstand.
As rack-and-stack guru Gary Groenewold from Westrec Marinas in Florida said in his presentation, upland and dry storage is a most effective way of reusing old ‘‘brownfield’’ sites – those that have had former development on them – at places such as White Bay.
Groenewold owns 11 dry stacks in the US, and since the 1970s the average boat size has increased from 30 feet to 37 feet.
Groenewold says the advantages of dry-stacking a boat include less travel time, no ramp rage and no need for a ute to tow the boat.
One of his best advertising techniques is distributing flyers at boat ramps that simply ask, ‘‘You sick of this yet?’’