Waterfront Mixed-Use Feasibility Study: Marina with Restaurant, Lodging, Retail or Slip Condominiums

A marina with a restaurant, a lodge, a ship store leased to a dealer or a slip-condominium regime is three borrowers in one, and the credit programs sort them differently. MMCG Invest prepares waterfront mixed-use feasibility studies for SBA 7(a), SBA 504, USDA Business and Industry and conventional financing that separate the operating company's revenue from the tenants' rent and the unit sales, apply the 51 and 60 percent occupancy tests to the leased space, run the slip-condominium structure against SBA's development rules and USDA's commercial-rental and residential exclusions, read the public ground lease for the leasehold mortgagee protections a lender needs, and report the debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) by year on the business the loan actually finances.

The marina is the operating business. The restaurant tenant, the hotel, the boat dealer and the slip owners are not, and the rules treat them as what they are: passive rental under SBA's 13 CFR 120.110(c), commercial rental property under USDA's 7 CFR 5001.115(g), residential under 5001.118(a), and speculative development under the SBA rules that exclude building for future sale. The study's first job is to draw the line between the business the loan finances and the real estate it happens to sit beside. Safe Harbor's own 2019 gross profit shows the proportions: 68 percent storage, 12 percent service, 6 percent commercial leases, 4 percent fuel, 2 percent boat and cabin rentals, under 1 percent retail and restaurants. Mears Point Marina on Kent Island carried about $1 million of in-place net operating income on 540 slips in 2020 including leased restaurants and an approved 211-unit land component, and Mears Great Oak Landing came with a lodge and a golf course; both sold without a disclosed price. Those are the files on which the operating marina is the smaller half of the value, and the lender needs to know which half it is lending on.

The second reason is the transient rule. Under SOP 50 10 8, carried into 8.1 for applications received on or after October 1, 2026, a marina is an eligible rental business only if more than 50 percent of its prior-year revenue comes from transients staying 30 days or less, and SBA has not said whether rent from a third-party restaurant or lodge counts in the numerator, the denominator or neither. A hotel on the same parcel is tested on the same rule in its own right, and the lodging method is on the hotel feasibility study page. The general marina method is on the marina feasibility study hub, the restaurant tenant's underwriting on the restaurant feasibility study hub, and the land-side rules for retail and residential on the mixed-use feasibility study and retail feasibility study pages.

SBA 504 finances the marina real estate and buildings, and the leased space is the constraint. Under 13 CFR 120.131 the borrower must occupy at least 51 percent of an existing building and 60 percent of new construction, may permanently lease up to 49 percent of an existing building and 20 percent of new construction, and must plan to occupy some of the remaining new space within three years and all of it within ten; SOP 50 10 8.1 counts "boat slips and docks for marinas" as rentable property actively used in the business, so slip customers do not reduce occupancy and a restaurant tenant, a broker or a dealer does. Marinas are on SBA's special purpose list, so the contribution is 15 percent, or 20 percent for a borrower operating two years or less. Where the restaurant or store is run by the marina's own Operating Company rather than leased, it is the borrower's occupancy and its revenue enters the transient test on whatever reading SBA applies. The Eligible Passive Company holds the real estate and the submerged-lands lease and leases the whole of it to the Operating Company under a lease that runs at least the loan term; an EPC may engage in no business other than leasing to the OC, which is why third-party tenants complicate the structure and the study draws the leases before it draws the stack. The rules are on the SBA regulatory spine and the SBA 504 feasibility study and SBA 7(a) feasibility study pages.

USDA Business and Industry has its own line. Mixed use is permitted only where at least 50 percent of projected revenue comes from business use under 5001.105(b)(13); primarily commercial rental property where the borrower has no control over tenants and services is ineligible under 5001.115(g); timeshares and residential housing whose primary purpose is independent housing are ineligible under 5001.118(a); and a publicly owned or nonprofit recreational facility inherently commercial in nature is excluded under 5001.115(b). A rural marina with a restaurant it operates and a lodge it runs is an eligible tourist and recreation facility; a marina whose plan depends on selling slips or liveaboard housing is exposed under both exclusions. See the USDA feasibility study page and the USDA regulatory spine.

No state in MMCG's review has a marina-specific condominium statute. Slip condominiums are created under the general condominium acts, Chapter 718 in Florida, Chapter 47C in North Carolina, the Horizontal Property Act in Tennessee, where the Court of Appeals has described a dockominium as a series of slips sold individually and governed as a condominium; Georgia's act does not define the term. A Florida title practitioner describes a dockominium unit as having its own parcel number, deed, tax bill and association assessment, and real property only where it is conveyed by deed over privately owned submerged land or as a legally created condominium unit, while a slip over a state submerged-lands lease is a leasehold whose expiration governs. North Carolina practitioners report slips held under the condominium act or under a non-condominium marina association, with the association paying property tax on the amenities, land, docks and slips in the second case. Michigan treats docking from condominium developments, yacht clubs and other commonly owned access points as marina purposes under Part 325, so a Great Lakes slip condominium needs a bottomlands conveyance like any commercial marina. Posted condo slip resales in Washington run $145,000 for a 40-foot slip and $170,000 for a covered 34.5-foot slip, asking.

SBA's position on slip sales is not written anywhere MMCG found; the nearest text excludes building homes for future sale except under the Builders CAPLine, and the study treats slip sales as a question for the lender and SBA rather than as eligible proceeds. USDA's commercial-rental and residential exclusions are the live risk. The study therefore separates the operating company's revenue from unit sale proceeds and association dues, shows that the borrower owns and controls the operating business, the fuel dock and the service areas apart from the condominium regime, computes the transient test only on the revenue the borrower earns, and tests business revenue against USDA's 50 percent rule.

Freedom Boat Club, owned by Brunswick since 2019, is the franchise model lenders see most, and it has a slip and rental agreement at Fish-Tale Marina in Fort Myers Beach among others. The aggregator record puts the 2022 franchise fee at $50,000 and the Item 7 investment at $181,000 to $487,500, the current posting at $222,500 to $500,500 including $120,000 to $300,000 of boat inventory with a 6 percent royalty, and no Item 19 earnings claim in the 2019 to 2022 documents; those are aggregator figures, and the study pulls the state registry copy before it relies on them. A for-profit club selling memberships for fleet access is an operating business on its face; an equity yacht club or a 501(c)(7) club is a nonprofit and ineligible for 7(a) and 504 under 13 CFR 120.110(a), though eligible for SBA disaster loans. Whether a membership that buys hours or days on a boat is "revenue derived from transients" under the marina rule is a question for SBA, and the study puts it in writing rather than assuming. Rental fleets are modeled as separately titled collateral on a five to seven year amortization, with the vessel mortgaged under the federal preferred ship mortgage where it is Coast Guard documented; the municipal concession record puts rental rent at $1,000 a month plus 10 percent of gross sales at Whitefish, Montana's city beach, and the Paintsville Lake sublease counts houseboat, fishing boat, jet ski, kayak and canoe rental inside gross receipts.

On public land the instrument decides whether there is anything to mortgage. The City of Miami Beach's marina site lease bars encumbrance of the city's interest, requires any leasehold mortgage to make insurance proceeds available to repair and restore the site, and gives a leasehold mortgagee or its designee a new lease with the original lease's priority; the County of Los Angeles' Marina del Rey leases recite assignments of leasehold across a 1962 to 2022 term extended by option; Hudson River Park Trust's Chelsea Piers lease defines its leasehold mortgage and lender terms. Those are the clauses a lender needs. A management agreement, such as Daytona Beach's $5,000 a month plus a 5 to 9 percent incentive at Halifax Harbor, gives the operator no leasehold at all, and a short concession or license cannot carry term debt. SBA's leasehold chapter requires the lease to run at least the loan term with an assignment and landlord's waiver and ground lease clauses on encumbrance, amendment, lender cure and proceeds, and it says nothing specific about public waterfront, so the study reads the instrument for counsel. The public-owner method is on the public and municipal marina feasibility study page.

The study builds the marina's revenue by line and stay length on the coastal marina feasibility study method, the restaurant's sales and margin on the restaurant method with its own trade area and build-out cost, the lodge's occupancy and rate on the hotel method, and the leased space at the rent the lease states, haircut for the tenant's own risk. Third-party rent is carried as passive income outside the operating company's EBITDA for the transient test and inside the property's cash flow for the lender's coverage, and the study shows both. Safe Harbor's commercial leases ran 6 percent of gross profit and its restaurants and retail under 1 percent, which is the proportion a lender should expect from a marina-led site; a restaurant-led site is a restaurant with slips, and the study says so. The capital stack puts the marina real estate on 504 at 15 or 20 percent with the occupancy test documented, the operating company's equipment and working capital on 7(a), the tenants' improvements on the tenants, and any slip sales outside the SBA stack altogether. Project cost follows the public records on the hub: slips at about $50,000 to $100,000, seawall at about $3,700 a foot, a fuel system at $360,000 to $2 million, and the restaurant build-out at the ranges on the independent full-service restaurant feasibility study page.

The study reports DSCR by year on the operating company against 1.15 times on a 504 or standard 7(a) loan and 1.25 times historical on an acquisition, and separately on the property with tenant rent included so the lender sees the difference. The cases are the format's: the transient reading with and without third-party rent, tenant vacancy and re-leasing cost, restaurant sales at the published failure base rates, lodging occupancy, slip sales deferred or excluded, and the storm and insurance cases of a coastal marina. Where the operating marina cannot carry the loan without the tenants, the determination says so and shows the conventional structure that can lend on the whole.

A MMCG waterfront mixed-use study includes the structure analysis with each revenue stream assigned to its borrower and its program, the occupancy test on the leased space, the slip-condominium and membership analysis with the SBA and USDA questions written for the lender, the ground lease review for counsel, the marina, restaurant and lodging projections on their own methods, the project cost by component, the capital stack by program, the DSCR schedules on the operating company and the property, the stress cases, the conditions list, and a signed conclusion. Standard delivery is nine to sixteen business days; expedited delivery in five to seven is available. Fees begin at $4,900 for a single-site SBA 7(a) study and run $7,500 to $15,000 for 504, combined and USDA studies, with multi-component sites quoted at scoping. Revisions required by the lender or agency are made at no additional cost under MMCG's written acceptance guarantee. See MMCG's feasibility study methodology and where we work.

The nearest model cases are the Chesapeake wet-slip marina acquisition with fuel dock, where the leased space and the fuel dock sit beside the slips, and the Ozarks reservoir concession marina, where rentals, a store and a restaurant are modeled inside the Corps rent. The lodging side of a marina resort follows the glamping and short-term rental feasibility study and hotel feasibility study methods.