Full service marina to be built near old Williams Seafood location
CHATHAM COUNTY, Ga. (WTOC) -A full-service marina will be built on the location of a famous Savannah haunt: Williams Seafood.
The former restaurant, located near the Bull River Bridge, burned down in 2005. Fire investigators concluded that the fire had been set intentionally. No arrests were ever made.
Now, the managing partner of the property says they have some big plans for the site that’s sat empty for 15 years.
“We’ve been looking for a location to place a marina for quite some time," said Thomas McCarthy with Savannah Boathouse. "And there aren’t that many available, deep-water pieces of property around.”
Tom McCarthy says after looking around at other full-service marinas in the area, that he realized most with wet and dry storage are about 95 to 100 percent full.
“That leads us to believe that there’s a demand for more space," he said. "So we just figured this would be a great opportunity to do that.”
McCarthy’s team has owned the roughly 5-acre piece of land for two years, and after extensive site evaluation, he’s anticipating a groundbreaking in the next few weeks.
“It’s overwhelming how many people are interested that want to keep a boat here already," McCarthy said. "I think we’ll fill up in a short period of time due to the demand.”
The Savannah Boathouse will consist of wet storage and 108 dry storage spaces and have an office building with an event deck that can be used for events like weddings and parties.
The marina will be full-service and provide docking for boaters traveling up and down the east coast.
“We hope to bring more business to everybody in the area. The guys who helped me design this marina are the other marina operators in town.”
McCarthy says the Savannah Boathouse could take between 12 and 18 months to complete.
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