This week on the Shipshape podcast, we had the pleasure of speaking to Jason Spalding, Executive Vice President at Marina Services. We got the inside scoop about the current state of marinas and real estate around the world, found out what’s been happening as the boats have got bigger (and bigger!) and discover his unique take on the future of the industry.

Jason Spalding

Brought to you by SHIPSHAPE

Transcript —-

Farah [00:00:07] Hello and welcome to the Shipshape Podcast, a series of podcasts where we meet amazing people and talk about their experiences, personal, technical and all related to the maritime world. Come and dive in. Dive in, Dive in.

 

Georgia [00:00:41] This week on the Shipshape podcast, we have the pleasure of speaking to Jason Spalding, Executive Vice President at Marina Services. We discover everything there is to know about the current state of marinas and real estate around the world. Find out what’s been happening over the years as the boats have got bigger and pick his brains about the future of the industry. My name is Georgia Tyndall and I’m recording from Lancaster on a freelance editor and writer.

 

Merrill [00:01:06] And I’m Merrill Charette and on recording from a Ta-Shing Tashiba 36 in Boston, Massachusetts. So, Jason, where are you recording from?

 

Jason [00:01:16] Today, I’m in Miami, Florida. I’m typically based down in South Florida, back and forth between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. But I’m in Miami, Florida, today.

 

Merrill [00:01:24] As the weather down there these days.

 

Jason [00:01:26] It has been starting this past week. But we’re getting ready for this cold front to come through, an anticipated 2 to 3 inches of cold rain tomorrow. So it’s a little bit unpleasant, rather, for us, but nothing compared to what’s going on in the northeast right now.

 

Merrill [00:01:40] You know, everyone’s always told me that Florida is the hotbed of all things Marine. What’s your take on that?

 

Jason [00:01:48] It’s kind of a claim to fame thing. It’s I think people in this market certainly buy into it and believe it. And people in other markets, you know, either stateside or internationally, would argue with that claim. For instance, Fort Lauderdale being the yachting capital world. Certainly there’s a number of marinas there, a number of major refit and maintenance facilities. But I think being from this market, you buy into it and use it to promote your business and promote your industry. But I think there are certainly other places in the world that obviously argue against that.

 

Merrill [00:02:20] So you’re in the marina business. How did you end up there?

 

Jason [00:02:26] A short version of a long story is. I’m a software engineer by degree and I did land development for about four or five years. So I’ve been involved in real estate in some form or capacity for about 20 years now. I had post silver engineering work. I started my own consulting company in real estate, and then I joined a large firm, international firm called CBRE, CB Richard Ellis and 2008 they typically focus on the major call for groups of industrial multifamily office and retail and then have niche divisions. But regardless, they didn’t have a real focus on the marina sector. We’re in our boatyard, shipyard sector. So I pushed that initiative and started that group with Internal CBRE back in 2014 and recently transitioned out of CBRE as early as year. That’s kind of the short version of the story. Happy to discuss some other things that triggered that interest get in the consolidation industry now.

 

Merrill [00:03:23] So when you were showing up back in or I guess you didn’t show up in what was a 2013, you said that you started working in Marine.

 

Jason [00:03:31] Yes, correct.

 

Merrill [00:03:32] So from 2013 to 2023, how has the market evolved over time.

 

Jason [00:03:39] Specifically in the States in the US? What really piqued my interest is I got wind of this change in regulations from the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service back in 2013, which there is a preliminary change in the regulations in 2014 and then the final regulations at the tail end of 2016. Big picture, what that entailed was you can classify marinas, the associated real estate, meaning the floating docks, dry stack structures under words referred to as a REIT, which is an abbreviation for real estate investment trust. So as of January 2017, prior to that, you could not classify marina property under a structure. That all changed. It’s been done historically and other real estate classes, malls, apartment buildings, self-storage centers, industrial warehouses, advertisement, billboards, and probably more similar to marinas on mobile home parks, RV parks, all those other asset classes. The regulations were changed prior to January 2017, and some of them some time ago historically. So that’s really what’s triggered this push in this consolidation in the U.S. to create these larger and larger portfolios of marina owner operators on a national scale, national and regional scale, I should say. And there’s about 24 entities now driving that consolidation of marinas, boatyards and shipyards in the US.

 

Merrill [00:05:01] Why did it take so long for Marine to develop to that point?

 

Jason [00:05:05] I think some parties tried to. I mean, certainly if you to go back and look at history, there are some entities, a handful entities out there in the U.S. that built their own portfolios, smaller portfolios, nothing like the scale we’re seeing today regionally in the U.S., the IRS, and the tax advantages. But the ruling really pushed the envelope on that. I think if you go back and look historically as to why why it took so long to happen, it was probably. A real lack of interest from private equity groups, from lenders, from banking institutions. If you go back ten years, you know, 2010, there was four major food groups get a real estate, multi-family buildings, office buildings, industrial warehouses and retail, and then probably another seven or eight asset classes and then maybe marinas. From a banks perspective or lending perspective on interest and lending. They didn’t really understand them. They didn’t understand operations, they didn’t understand how to underwrite them. They didn’t understand how to perform them over time. So there’s really a lack of interest from the investment community, private equity or banking institutions in specifically the marina asset class.

 

Georgia [00:06:09] From like an idiot point of view, what are the sort of fundamental differences between, you know, marine real estate and normal real estate, you know, as just someone who doesn’t know anything about it? What will be the key differences?

 

Jason [00:06:21] Well, I think it’s a good question. I think from an operational standpoint. I mean, first of all, comparing it to other asset classes, you obviously have to be on the waterfront. And if you’re trying yeah, if you’re in a major metro or major area population and you’re trying to acquire waterfront land for purposes of Marina, you’re typically competing against apartment developers, condo developers, mixed use developers who can pay a much higher purchase price overall because they can go vertical. Yeah, they can build three or 400 apartment buildings or condo buildings on that same parcel of land, and they’re paying on a density basis of purchase price per unit. If you equate that, you know, if they’re paying 100,000 a unit or 50,000 unit where the case may be, and you correlate that back to price per square foot or price per square meter, it’s much higher than a marina developer will pay. So that’s kind of the first barriers to entry and creating a new marina on the operations standpoint. So it’s really a customer service driven business. I’ve always believed in that and always said that you’re accommodating the boater customer base if you’re not, you know, if they’re boaters, not happy boaters staying and everyone is not happy, they’re going to go elsewhere. So it’s a very customer service driven business. There’s a number of factors that come into play from a development standpoint or operational standpoint. On the shelf life of docks. You can replace stocks every, you know, 20, 25 years, forever. The case may be depending on the construction. There’s a big change now in customer boating base and vessel sizes and increasing larger, wider vessels. So our marina that was built maybe 20, 25 years ago may not be able to necessarily accommodate today’s customer base. So maybe there may be some slight vacancy due to Marina specific Marina not being able to accommodate today’s customer base, the full range of customer boaters. You have to deal with things like dredging out if there’s something in the marina. Yeah, engineering issues and then environmental studies here specifically and stuff where they have manatee protection programs. You’re doing lots of additional steps on the environmental side that may not be required as compared to something on inland development.

 

Georgia [00:08:28] Yeah, for sure. I’m really interested to pick up on what you said about today’s client base. Basically putting it bluntly, boats are getting bigger. So tell us about how the sector is having to kind of catch up with the I’m just speaking as someone with no knowledge about the Superyacht industry, I can tell you yachts are getting a lot bigger. So what is the impact of that?

 

Jason [00:08:49] Basically, I think it’s in transition. It’s happening as we speak there. So again, if a marina was built historically 20, 25 years ago, you know, a center, large center console at that time was 30, 35 feet. And today we’re getting that 55 foot plus center consoles. So if that’s that marina, it’s built to a customer specifically built to accommodate that boat or customer base. At that point in time, submarines have been able to repurpose those older slips. But it’s going to create this reconfiguration and in my opinion, of existing marina. So the real value in the marina is that they have the existing rights to operate those slips from all the overseeing local entities, city, county, state entities to operate that marina. And at these larger vessels, we’re pushing towards a larger and larger vessel customer base. They are going to have to figure out a way how do we reconfigure our marinas, how do we expand our marinas to accommodate that today’s customer base and then pushing towards the superyacht mega-yacht sector? Certainly from an ownership perspective and profitability perspective, 150 foot yacht is much more valuable to have in Marina than versus, say, 350 foot boats.

 

Georgia [00:10:03] Exactly. So they you’ve already mentioned the service element as well. Does that mean that frankly, these marinas are going to have to ramp up their level of service, what they’re actually offering to get these clientele?

 

Jason [00:10:15] It certainly helps. That’s a value add. Say if you have onsite amenities for CREW, for FNB or nice for FNB or food and beverage or restaurant component.

 

Georgia [00:10:27] Thank you. I would.

 

Jason [00:10:30] Sorry, real estate terminology.

 

Georgia [00:10:32] I like a bit jog and throw it and go to.

 

Jason [00:10:35] A nicer restaurant component. Better amenities, obviously restrooms, bathroom facilities, laundry facilities, being able to accommodate crew, potentially gym or workout facilities for the client, both the client and the crew. So some of those onsite amenities, if you’re within a few miles or five miles of another marina that doesn’t have those entities. Obviously, that creates an advantage for your facility.

 

Merrill [00:11:00] Well, what I’m hearing is that owning a marina and operating it is a ton of work to actually do. And how have you brought up the apartment complexes? Because I’ve seen a lot of marinas that are also, like affiliated with like condos and various other things. So I’m wondering, how are these marinas making a ton of money? Is it more? Is it a better financial decision to be building condos than it is to be building marinas, especially if they last 20 to 25 years and you have to replace the docks? That sounds like a fortune.

 

Jason [00:11:33] It’s a good question, I think. It really depends. You know, it’s there’s a couple of things there. I think from a development standpoint are real estate, big picture, real estate perspective. It’s what you know, it’s what you understand and somewhat geographically dependent. So there’s some of the other asset classes, I would say specifically as we speak right now, condo and multi-family development and industrial warehouses, those sectors of the real estate market have become so oversaturated and so competitive where they’re killing each other basically to get a deal done. If there’s potential acquisition on their bidding each other up on pricing. So inflates more competition, creates higher purchase price and more competition. So some of the private equity groups who have historically pursued those other asset classes are now looking, they call it alternative asset classes, which can be self-storage centers, mobile home parks, RV parks, marinas. I mean, there’s a number of alternative asset classes per se for an investment standpoint. But this because of this IRS regulation and what I refer to as the read up in the sector, it’s really been the game changer for some of these private equity groups and lending institutions providing the funds for new development.

 

Georgia [00:12:44] So what? Okay. I’ll ask Bob then, what do you think are the main character traits you need to be successful in working in real estate, whether that’s Marine or more commercial real estate? Well, generally, what are the character traits do you think you need to be, you know, top of that game?

 

Jason [00:13:01] I think no matter what the asset class is, you need to be a person that’s capable, a little bit outgoing and you’re going to build relationships. It’s a relationship industry, this that goes across the board for all asset classes and real estate. So whatever your focus is or expertise is, you want to focus on, you know, be it marinas, be it apartment buildings, be it industrial warehouses that’s building those relationships with both the owners and the investment groups investing in them. Because at some point in time something is going to trigger. It’s all comes down to timing, either a potential new acquisition or a potential sale. So you want to be top of mind awareness in that person’s mind as the go to person or the contact person, or because you built a history over talking to them for the past six or eight years. So you want to be the relationship, the contact person, the mind awareness when that event happens and they’re looking for a new acquisition or looking for a sale to use you for your services. So it’s really building relationships over time and keeping in constant contact with owners in the industry.

 

Merrill [00:13:59] I see that you post a ton of different marinas for sale on your LinkedIn. How often do marinas actually come on the market? Is there like a huge buying phase that’s going on?

 

Jason [00:14:11] Yes, Right now there’s a big push for consolidation in the states because of the read up, because of consolidation, there’s less and less on the market. A lot of the ones that come up and are readily available could get picked up fairly quickly. But some of that depends on the sellers or the owners pricing expectation. There’s less and less marinas on the market compared to, you know, 2010 coming out of the oh eight or nine recession, there was many more marinas available. And because of this consolidation and the 24 entities now nationally acquiring marinas and trying to create their own portfolios of scale, they’re actively looking at opportunities. Some of them actively have their own brokers in-house. So a similar role that I do in-house pursue new acquisitions for them. So I think it’s good for in general for the overall industry, both real estate and from a marina standpoint, it creates a little more competition, but overall it creates more awareness for the marina sector and more interest in the space.

 

Merrill [00:15:09] So one of the things is you kind of see it in pretty much every facet of marine. If you don’t have experience with Marine and you’re coming from some outside perspective coming in, it is exceedingly hard to actually, you know, get people to connect with you and really be able to move the needle. So how? Much skill do you need to have with knowledge of like maritime in order to be successful?

 

Jason [00:15:36] The more knowledge of any industry, any sector, any job, the more knowledge and experience you have. Comes with time and it certainly helps. And the only there’s no shortcuts per se to get that experience or knowledge. Every transaction, every deal that I’m about, I’m still learning something new. A way to structure a deal under a purchase and sale agreement, a different sell side by side, depending on what side of representing in a transaction. I still learn something new and every transaction I’m doing today, I think with technology, obviously the internet and everything being out there today, it’s easier to gain some of that knowledge. There’s some very large industry events now nationally and internationally that can help you, you know, speed up that learning curve per se if you’re trying to get that knowledge. There’s Association of Marinas Conference and Expo, formerly known as International Marina and Boatyard Conference. That’s one of the best events in the U.S. that’s coming up at the end of January to actually here in Florida, in Daytona Beach. But that specific event has lots of educational seminars attached to it, daily events, breakout sessions throughout the day, and all kinds of topics regarding operations and management of marinas. That’s one of the anyone who’s looking to get into the industry or looking to gain some knowledge in an industry or new industry. That’s the first event I recommend they attend. And it’s it’s an invaluable initial experience. And they also typically do a marina tour, a local marina tour. Well, they’ll get take you around to four or five marinas. It’s an attack on the actual event. You’re paying extra for it, but they’ll go through four or five marinas locally and explain some of the operations and management components of those local marinas. That’s also a great, great way to get some quick knowledge and learning experience. But outside of that, there’s also, you know, there’s literally somewhere in the world industry, boating industry, marine industry event every week of the year. So there’s boat shows, there’s other international conferences like Chroma. There’s another large Marina industry association, the Marine International Council of Marina Industry Associations. There’s MRA, which is a marina recreational association out in California. There’s large industry kind of B2B events. Metz Trades is currently going on. It’s wrapping up, I believe, today. And Amsterdam.

 

Georgia [00:17:48] Yes, that’s right. About not one highly recommended. I’m not there but a should be.

 

Jason [00:17:56] So there’s all these events nationally internationally they all a lot of them have outside of the event itself with educational seminars they have speaker events, keynote presentations. So that’s kind of on that event attendance and building relationships perspective.

 

Georgia [00:18:09] Yeah, I think what Merrill was saying about it being difficult to jump into the industry from the outside, there’s definitely some truth in that. But when I started working as a journalist within yachting, I had no knowledge whatsoever. And I think what you were saying, Jason, about all the different maritime events that are out there shows you that it is possible to do that. You can kind of immerse yourself in it and get to know the industry really quite suddenly if you want to, if you’re just willing to kind of network and be open minded. I don’t know how you feel about it, Jason, but I found the industry to be quite a friendly place, actually.

 

Jason [00:18:43] Yes. One of the first things I noticed about the sector, the marina sector when I joined, started focusing on back in 2013, 2014, was that everyone seems to be willing to help out everyone else. It’s a tight knit industry. A lot of people know each other with an industry. They used to work at one company or now with another company, so they understand what others in the sector are doing. But it’s been outside of the industry events. It’s a great relationship. People are more than willing to help you succeed. It hasn’t gotten to that point of snarkiness, sharpness or competitiveness as some of the other real estate asset classes.

 

Georgia [00:19:20] That’s really interesting because, I mean, the moment you mention the word broker, you know, there’s a lot of associations with that word broker in terms of, yeah, being a bit shonky and possibly, you know, undercutting other people. It’s refreshing to hear that. That’s not been your experience.

 

Jason [00:19:36] No, it’s not is and don’t get me wrong, there are brokers out there who are out solely for their own purposes. So I try to act in the manner on a consulting basis, meet whatever my client’s needs are, have an initial discussion with them, give them some options on exit strategy or a potential sale. But overall, if a broker knows what they’re doing and I’m providing the correct guidance and consulting, there’s multiple ways to sell a property or or marina from a mass marketing campaign to a quiet off market offering per se, where you’re just going to your top 15 or 20 buyers. But as long as you’re providing the client guidance and meeting their expectations, I always tell my clients from me going through that process, what’s a mass marketing transaction or mark off marketing transaction? If you get down to the top three potential buyers, you’re creating your advantage. You’re outing is you’re creating your. The process. Any time you have a competitive process, you’re typically increasing the purchase price and that can be anywhere from 10 to 15% increase in purchase price from the owner saying, Well, I’m going to sell my property, I’m going to do it myself. I know the likely buyer, I’m just going to sell it to him directly.

 

Farah [00:20:48] This show was sponsored by.

 

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Farah [00:21:49] Welcome back to the Shipshape podcast.

 

Merrill [00:21:56] So one of the things that you’ve mentioned is that the playbook of, you know, basically buying up these marinas and essentially like these monopolies that are showing up within Marine are the result of lessons learned through RV And you speak on that a little bit.

 

Jason [00:22:12] Yeah, it’s no problem. It’s very similar. And I’ve thought this since I first became aware of the regulations and IRAs and the read up. So of the other real estate asset classes that are already rolled up and consolidate under a real estate investment trust. Marinas are most similar to RV parks, recreational parks, or what you may refer to as holiday parks. And that sector today, there’s probably 50 regional, national, regional and national owner operators in RV parks. And that sector has already been read it up for some time. And what happened to that is almost exactly what’s happening in the marina space today, where you had regional owner operators creating their own portfolios of size. And if it was a West Coast U.S. and East Coast Western entity, they may trade out some assets. And you had some consolidation where one, an entity already involved in a space bought out a competitor or part of someone else they perceived as a competitor. It picked over all the institutional class per say. When I say introduce classic the best of the best properties nationally known necessarily all sell. I mean if it wasn’t a family, the ownership may have not been willing to sell at that point in time. For whatever reason, they still retain the property they picked over all the institutional classes and that that find the reach honest to invest money over time. So then they had to expand internationally going into Canada and going offshore Western Australia and going offshore east and into Europe and looking at some other markets. So we’ve almost seen that exact same thing play out today. I think the first domino or potential domino was an entity called Equity Lifestyles. It was one of the largest, the second largest mobile home park. RV park operator and the U.S. partnered with Centex communities under a joint venture that transpired a few years ago. Transaction I was involved in loggerhead Marina’s portfolio. Long Story Short, LLC bought out the remaining percentage interest and controls loggerhead marina portfolio today. But secondary to that, we’ve seen some other recent transactions. Some communities use the first largest mobile home park. RV park operator acquired safe Harbor marinas use the largest marina owner in the U.S. That’s transpired about two and a half years ago now. And then more recently, you’ve seen Westbrook Marinas acquire IGT by filing what we are doing. Yeah. And then also there was from an equity standpoint, Centerbridge Capital Partners is the true parent owner. They acquired Centex Marinas and Westbrook marinas. Both entities now are primarily controlled by Centerbridge partners. So there’s been this partnership consolidation of private equity investments over time, and that followed suit to almost exactly what happened in the mobile home park and RV recreational vehicle park space. The next thing you know, so they’re kind of looking internationally now. And you guys obviously been international for a while and been focused on a niche, a niche within the niche, right. So in the marina sector, but mainly focused on the Mega-yacht superyacht space.

 

Georgia [00:24:58] Yes.

 

Jason [00:24:59] So that was kind of a natural fit for Marine Max to take that next step and acquire them given their marine Max ties to boat sales and Northrop and Johnson and some of the mega yacht management firms.

 

Georgia [00:25:11] Yeah, Marine Max is everywhere now. I mean, honestly, I interviewed one of their top guys a year or so ago, and it’s just so impressive what they’re up to. Like, they’re just popping up everywhere, going from little boats to big boats. It’s a big, big step.

 

Jason [00:25:24] Yes. No, it’s a very large step and a logical step for them. I think it makes sense in their long term strategy and goals, this international expansion. You know, we’ve also seen it in some of the subsidiary entities. So like boat clubs, there’s big push for boat clubs for the past few years now, membership clubs for go to different facility and just rent a boat or have access to a boat. So Freedom Boat Club’s going through some pretty large expansion over in the UK right now.

 

Merrill [00:25:50] Yeah, well, I feel like I just watch this movie about this. It was called Inception.

 

Georgia [00:25:56] Oh, yeah.

 

Merrill [00:25:57] So let me ask you, do you have any horror stories from all your experience in, you know, these marinas? Have you just like come across a marina that you’re like, whoa, this is pretty beat up or anything like that?

 

Jason [00:26:10] I don’t want to get into. There is always there’s all.

 

Merrill [00:26:12] You don’t need to talk specifics.

 

Jason [00:26:14] Just yeah, there’s so there’s always any industry, not just any real estate sector asset class. There’s always, you know, someone, an owner operator or equity who’s not on the up and up or say they have bad intentions or it’s either bad intentions or lack of knowledge and true understanding of how to operate a facility. But if you’re not the owners pocketing money or, you know, running into a reserve account for a rainy day fund for future improvements and they’re pocketing additional money or quitting, not wanting to salary, just taking away from the marina and the future. Upkeep of the marina. So I’ve seen some scenarios like that where you can look at tell by looking at the profit and loss statements, annual profit loss statements that something is not right. You know, there’s typical theoretical percentages that should be applied to salary advertising insurance. So some of those metrics per se, if something’s way off, it’s it’s pretty quick and easy to tell something’s not right in the operations of the marina.

 

Merrill [00:27:10] Hmm. Sounds like some piracy. And so what do you think as we kind of get near the end of this, how do you think the future of marinas is going to play out? You know, let’s say ten, 20, 30 years from now?

 

Jason [00:27:23] I think, you know, no one has a crystal ball per se, but in general, what I see trending now. So there’s lots of I’d say a couple of things. There’s lots of what they call public private partnerships. I’ve been involved in a handful, which is typically a county or city or government entity who owns the land, owns the marina, and operates the marina with the city county employees. Well, if that marina needs $8 million, $10 million to redo the docks, is that the best decision to use the taxpayers money to redo the docks and make that expenditure capital improvements to redo the docks? So they’re entering into public private partnerships or partnerships with some of these larger and at marina owner operators to come in and operate and take control of the marina under a 5075 year lease per se, depending on the structure and that entities investing the funds and money to redo and improve the marina. I think as long as they’re giving the existing employees every chance to stay on board and keep their job and bring their experience and knowledge to the customer base, once that transitions under the public private partnership, I think it’s good for the industry in general and typically improves the operation and management of the marina and sometimes for adding new facilities, restaurant components, new boater lounges, additional components that the city or the county may have never built themselves. So that’s one of the things I see trending. It’s been ongoing for a little while, but it’s certainly trending more and more on public private partnerships on city or county owned marinas. And then mainly on the dry stock side, there’s this big push now on automation. So there’s been a handful built to date and the U.S.. Few down in South America. But this in markets where it’s your land, constrained by land constrained, I mean, property prices for all land are very high. Rather than build a traditional dry stack. We can only typically go for maybe five levels high with a forklift or creating these fully automated systems. That’s really an internal elevator system to handle the loading unloading of the boats outside of the dry stack.

 

Merrill [00:29:26] So that’s really seen those.

 

Jason [00:29:27] Yeah. So there’s a big push towards dry stack automation and there’s push now, you know, is there a way to include dry stack automation with another building? It would be a condo or multifamily component in the same structure. So under the automated dry stack, you don’t have that wide 80 foot wide turning radius that’s required by a forklift. And then you’re also only limited by whatever the local land development code, whatever the local height limitation is. So in theory, no 100 and 4050 feet tall, you know, seven, eight, nine levels up on automated system in the same building size square footprint that you could with a traditional dry stack. So again, typically anywhere between 30 to 40% more vessels in the same building size. Ground level building size.

 

Merrill [00:30:14] Sounds like a boat skyscraper.

 

Jason [00:30:16] And basically, yeah, that’s a good way to think of it. And that’s one of the big pushes on the technology side. And then also, sorry, on the automation side, on the technology side, there’s more. It’s evolving pretty much almost on a monthly basis now. I would say annual basis. There’s a big push in technology and how do we make marinas more? Lost my train of thought.

 

Merrill [00:30:38] So boats are kind of like eternal, right? You know, a lot of boats that have were built 30, 40 years ago are still out there. And there seems to just be like more and more boats coming in. The fear of a recession, people have brought that up. But I’ve come to think that there’s been such a push for awareness of boating over the past few years, and especially during COVID, that there is more people that want to want to get into boating than there are boats. So how does that factor in with the marinas? Because I’ve been hearing stories of people like, Oh, we can’t find a place to put the boat and we don’t know what we’re going to do. I think on a long enough time scale, if there’s going to be more and more boats, that might be a problem.

 

Jason [00:31:20] Yes, it could be an issue. I think that’s one of the thought process, I think behind this big push from the boat clubs from Boat said are Carefree Boat Club, Freedom Boat Club. A lot of the individual owner operators coming out with their own internal kind of brand of boat clubs within their marinas is rather than paying whatever your monthly rate is per foot radius for your vessel, you can pay $400, $3 a month and access this number of boats in any one hour facilities nationally. So I think that’s. A way to address people. It’s really kind of an entry point. I think there’s a real intent there to get people interested in voting who may have not been voting yet. Membership club, and then to transition them into actual boat buyer and long term customer at your marina.

 

Georgia [00:32:03] Yeah. Get them hooked. Get on the the gateway. The gateway boating. That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?

 

Jason [00:32:08] Yes. Yeah, exactly.

 

Georgia [00:32:10] Where in the world is the most exciting development in this sphere happening? Because you’re obviously calling from the U.S.. Is that where we should be looking?

 

Jason [00:32:17] From what standpoint?

 

Georgia [00:32:18] From, like a just marina development point of view?

 

Jason [00:32:21] Yeah. I mean, there’s a number of proposed projects going on. I think, you know, you look at some of the entities involved in that side of the business on the consulting and engineering business, there’s this push really globally outside of this hiccup in the economy and everything that’s happening now. There’s still this ongoing push really internationally. I don’t think it’s limited to any specific market per say. I know of a handful of developments proposed or in the works here in Florida. I think if you look on an international scale, if you look at Bellingham marinas or some of the dock construction guys, engineering entities, engineering firms who are more focused on the consulting side, those guys are busier than ever on an international scale.

 

Merrill [00:33:03] Awesome. Jason So where can people find you and get in touch with you if they’re interested in any of your consulting or any of your the things that you can do.

 

Jason [00:33:13] Now, I appreciate it. Right now, the best way to get a hold of me is on LinkedIn. I’m under marina services. Marina Singular services. Plural on LinkedIn. Or if you just Google me, I’m one of the few. Spalding’s internationally tied to Marina, so if you google Spalding, just spell just like a sporting goods spa. LDI angie Marinas, I’ll pop up. Given my history in the sector. But the best way to get a hold of me is just ping me on LinkedIn. I’m pretty responsive.

 

Georgia [00:33:37] Merrill loves like Ted. So is that how you guys met?

 

Merrill [00:33:41] Yes.

 

Georgia [00:33:42] Yes. Oh, did I do.

 

Merrill [00:33:45] Ask them all? It was amazing talking to you.

 

Jason [00:33:48] I appreciate. It was a pleasure speaking with you both. And I appreciate the opportunity to have a discussion with you.

 

Farah [00:34:03] Check back every Tuesday for our latest episode and be sure to like, share and subscribe to ship shaped up for our.