I try to spend a couple of hours every afternoon doing maintenance and repair work at rural Money Island Marina. This is in rural southwest New Jersey, on the Delaware Bay, midway between Cape May at 40 miles to the south and the C&D Canal at 40 miles to the north. Money Island is an important seafood landing site in the Nantuxent estuary and is sometimes called “New Jersey’s Diamond in the Rough”. I am often the only person at the marina during these late hours in the day, and I get to watch beautiful sunsets from the miles of pristine open beach and thousands of acres of wetlands that surround us. My business coach calls this a passion project. My wife calls it much worse. I have been slowly converting the place toward sustainability since the 1990s.
The recreational marina closed for COVID shutdown in 2020 just like everybody else. With nobody on site to protect the property, local people looted and stole much of the equipment. One of the downsides of living in a low income rural area is that drug use and related crimes are more prevalent. Then a few months later we were hit by a terrible storm Isaias on August 3, 2020. Both of our local marine mechanics and my primary partner died of COVID. There wasn’t any COVID recovery money for the small rural businesses in this region, but that’s a different story. We never reopened.
So without any people or money, I decided to slowly tackle the work myself. I’m an accountant by profession, not a marina construction or a boat guy. But I figured I would learn little bits along the way. There were a few things that had to be done to reopen the marina. I had to rebuild a small fleet of boats, a boat launch, and a fuel system. We rebuilt the electrical system, the water well, and the water distribution system.
We lost our boat launch docks in the Isaias storm, so I build lightweight portable amphibious rafts to replace them. They can be pulled out whenever a storm threatens.
Then we lost our 2,000 gallon fuel system. I knew that we were eventually moving to clean, renewable energy for the long term, but we needed at least a small supply of gasoline and diesel for now. I build a mobile tank with a 12 volt pump on a jet ski trailer. That was working well until the pump broke last week when we were helping out a transient boat in an emergency.
Today my job was to repair that electric pump on the fuel tank. I took it apart and started a diagnosis that I read online. The first thing to check is the battery so I hooked up a charger/tester. The charger/tested had to be plugged in to 110 AC. We’ve already completed replacement of the electric utility poles that blew down during storm Isaias so the power system is top notch. We have many heavy duty extension cords for jobs like this. But the extension cord was tripping the CGFI circuit. When I checked it out, I found that saltwater intrusion into the extension cord was the likely issue. Causing internal damage to the cord and so I have to replace the ends. After switching to a different extension cord and testing the battery. I had to switch to a small electric meter. To trace. The problem through the circuit. My electric meter battery was dead. And I could not find. A Phillips screwdriver small enough to open the case. We must have 30 screwdrivers, but none that size. By this time the sky had opened up with a heavy downpour and I decided that was enough for today. I will be back tomorrow.
The point of the story is to share what it is like working in a rough rural environment. To fix one broken appliance, I first had to fix one tool, then another tool, and didn’t get back to the point where I started the day. One step forward, one step back.
The government’s larger plan is to sustainably redevelop the entire Marina community for multiple uses. This will require the cooperation of federal, state and local governments. This is a huge undertaking. Most of it will likely be completed by others after I am gone but I have offered to stay and work on site as long as future management wants me.
There are several separate sustainability projects planned here at Money Island at six different locations:
- Stabilize the shoreline properties and keep the one road open even with several feet of saltwater inundation.
- Transform to floating or wet flood proof infrastructure.
- Equip ourselves with amphibious vehicles and houseboats.
- Construct a commercial dock for large transient vessels.
- Continue to work with the commercial fishing companies as they develop local aquaculture – possibly an oyster nursery barge.
- Work with a local university to install a Marine Science Center.
- Rebuild the recreational marina with the region’s first electric power boat dealership.
- Install an ecotourism center that features a dockside restaurant and B&B rooms.
The total cost is estimated at around $40 million. The first projects will not be complete until 2030. That seems to be a big turn-off for a lot of the people I speak with who have become accustomed to ‘flipping’ development projects in about a year. But that’s just how long it takes to do these types of environmentally sensitive projects in New Jersey.
My primary role is to assist with the private investment requirements that will total about $10 million. Only $2 million of that will be my equity contribution. That means that I need to sell other investors on the concept for the rest. Based on this $10 million private investment, government and other institutions will match our effort 3:1. This provides an immediate increase in equity for investors. The financing will likely be in three rounds: 1) a pre-offering stabilization project that will be secured by a private mortgage at about $300,000. 2) A second round of $2 million for the new recreational marina. 3) A third round of about $8 million for the high end ecotourism project. In all, less than 2 million of it will be mine.
If any of this sounds interesting, I would love to speak with you to explain why I am so confident in this project’s future.