Fast-growing Nautical Ventures Group is expanding its Marine Superstore concept to Palm Beach County.
The Dania Beach company said Tuesday that it agreed to buy the Northlake Marina property in North Palm Beach and plans to open a store there this fall selling kayaks, paddleboards, boats, tenders and other marine supplies.
The one-acre site at 139 Shore Court, just east of US1 and Northlake Boulevard, has been listed at around $3.5 million, but the purchase price was not disclosed.
The property includes a two-story, 26,300-square-foot building and dry stacks for 66 boats and 10 in-water slips on an offshoot of the IntraCoastal Waterway. It is a 15-minute ride by boat to the Palm Beach inlet with no fixed bridges, a news release said.
“After the tremendous consumer response we had from the recent West Palm Beach boat show, combined with the projected demographic growth of the marine industry in Palm Beach, opening our first location here is the logical step,” Nautical Ventures CEO Roger Moore said in a statement.
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“We’ve had our eye on Palm Beach for a while,” Moore said, “but when the opportunity came up to take our business model one county north, we jumped on it.”
Nautical Ventures said it plans to modernize the showroom to handle a broader inventory and change the exterior to “take on the fun and playful feel” of the Dania Beach store.
The store should employ about 15 people, increasing the group’s job count to roughly 75 at its varied businesses, Moore said in an interview Tuesday.
The expansion comes just days after a marina group from South Carolina announced the purchase of the PGA Marina in Palm Beach Gardens and plans to re-develop that property. Atlantic Marina Holdings paid $8.45 million for the 7.5-acre site on the Intracoastal Waterway and aims to add slips to hold larger boats, among other upgrades there, said principal Joe H. Miller IV.
Investment in the marine business is rising as boating rebounds after the recession.
The Palm Harbor Marina on the West Palm Beach waterfront also plans to invest “millions” to add about 1,000 feet of dockage for larger yachts, according to its developers, Leisure Resorts.
“The marine industry has come back in a strong way up and down South Florida, and waterfront facilities are hard to come by,” Jim Bronstien, principal at Marine Business Advisors of North Palm Beach, said Tuesday. As both population and business quickly rise in the region’s northern reaches, “Palm Beach County is finally considered an equal partner in the industry with Broward and Miami-Dade.”
Nautical Ventures Group has been growing fast, partly by expanding overseas.
The group’s revenues rose from about $13 million in 2013 and roughly $23 million in 2014 and probably will top $25 million this year, Moore has said. He expects international sales to make up as much as 25 percent of business in a few years, up from about 5 precent to 10 percent of revenues last year.
The group has among its goals “to purchase underperforming marine enterprises that are in separate areas of expertise but collectively make up a single-source supplier … to the broad South Florida marine marketplace.”
Besides its Marine Superstore, Nautical Ventures also operates yacht brokerage QPS Marine and boat fuel provider LukFuel. The group has invested more than $11 million in capital improvements and added nearly 50 jobs in the past year, the statement said.
dhemlock@sunsentinel.com, 305-810-5009, @dhemlock on Twitter
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