With $300,000 in recent renovations just about complete, Windsor's Lakeview Park Marina is open for the new boating season.
The old customer service building at the municipal marina was torn down and replaced with a new structure.
"A wooden structure on the water, 30-plus years old typically doesn't do well," says Coordinator of Sports Services with the City of Windsor, Trese MacNeil. "The door frame, for example, was no longer usable because the wood had rotted so badly. There was water coming in through the walls, through the windows."
Ramps have been repaired, and some of the slips have been torn out and reconfigured to make room for bigger boats parking at the marina. MacNeil says they're also changes to the refueling area.
"We had it lowered and cemented," she says. "The TSSA [Transportation Standards and Safety Authority] requires that anybody disembarks the boat when it's being refueled, and we have an aging population of boaters. We needed to lower the level so people could get off their boats and then back on again, safely."
For the past number of years, MacNeil says the marina has been operating at full capacity with 250 members, but some of the almost 300 slips are kept available for overnight and day visitors.
She says the boating season started a few weeks ago for those most eager to get back in the water, but officially it begins May 1.