Update on new City Docks West Palm Beach

[sprink56]

As I had posted after my trip to the Palm Beach Boat Show, several vendors revealed that the three "East/West' docks are to remain and will be for public use.

I did some investigation and have made a good contact with the City of West Palm Beach. Christine Thrower is the director of Parks, Recreation and grounds maintenance for West Palm Beach. She and her husband are avid boaters and she is interested in our feedback in using the new docks.

This is what we know so far. The new docks will be available to the boating public starting this Friday (4/3/09) at noon. The availability will be 7 days a week from 5 AM until midnight. The only exception to this will be no access during Sunfest this year. The city was asked by the promoters to close the docks during that period and the city is complying.

There are no other planed closings. The docks are floating docks and will be patrolled by the same security firm that patrols Clematis Street and City Place. The city will publish guidelines for boaters between now and the official opening.

This is a long needed feature for West Palm Beach and will be the beginning of further development along the waterfront.

I mentioned our web site to Christine and she will be stoping in to see what we do. She can be reached at 561-804-4903 and E-Mail cthrower@wpb.org. Again, she is interested in our feed back.

Here is a link to some more info from the Palm Beach Post. http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2009/03/17/0317docks.html

 

[LmannyR]

Nice..... I wonder how they will limit access to the boat docking piers to boaters ONLY. Cabin locks are not the greatest protection against theft.

Should be nice to go for dinner, shop, walk, etc though.

 

[sprink56]

Nice..... I wonder how they will limit access to the boat docking piers to boaters ONLY. Cabin locks are not the greatest protection against theft.

Should be nice to go for dinner, shop, walk, etc though.

Christine and I spoke about that briefly. She's working on a no-cost registration (as I understand) to identify boaters that regularly use these docks. As soon as I know something I will post it on here or it will be on the City of West Palm Beach site.

 

[Odyssey]

this is really nice. i'm sure it will be a hit.

 

[sprink56]

I received an e-mail from the City of West Pal Beach today:

John,
Sorry for the delay in getting this to you.
Our grand opening celebration is Thursday, April 9 at 10:00 a.m. We're looking for a few boats (3 or so) that could be in the water near the docks and be a part of the celebration in some way (we're still determining specifics on what that would mean).
Let me know if there are a couple of boats that would like to be on-hand and participate.
Thanks, and have a great weekend!

-------------------------------------------------
Peter Robbins
Public Information Officer
City of West Palm Beach
Office: 561-822-1433
Cell: 561-644-6304

Peter then called me and explained that they are trying to play the docks up for the media next Thursday AM. If any of our Palm Beach Co. guys are out next Thursday AM the City would love to have some of us stop by for "media visibility purposes".

I explained that Thursday AM is a difficult time to plan something like this but I would pass it along and see what happens.

If the weather is good and I don't have any emergencies, I might make it. If any one else can make it let me know and maybe we can get together on this thing.:thumbsup:

 

[Asureyez]

Hi:

Christine and her husb are friends of mine, she is a great lady and I'm sure organized events can be arranged if the policies will allow.

You have a great friend to boaters in WPB now.

 

[sprink56]

Hi:

Christine and her husb are friends of mine, she is a great lady and I'm sure organized events can be arranged if the policies will allow.

You have a great friend to boaters in WPB now.

Christine mentioned that she and her husband used to live on the south fork of the New River and were members of the Lauderdale Yacht Club.:thumbsup:

 

[sprink56]

OK...We went to the new docks today and docked at the southern most dock or dock No. 3. It was nice...they are right at the end of Clematis Street near the amphitheatre and the city has people there to sign you in and assist with lines.

But...there are issues:

No.1 The stretch of ICW between Flagler Bridge North anf the Royal Palm Blvd bridge (about 2 miles) needs to be a No Wake zone. The traffic through there today with wakes was terrible and made it very uncomfortable to stay on the boat and if you don't have 3: lines attached with fenders you risk getting your boat damaged.

No. 2 There is no rub rail or bumper rail on the side of the docks. The nice teak strip needs to be replaced with standard dock strip.

No. 3 You can only dock on one side of the dock because the pilings are on one side and protrude from the dock...these are floating docks. This becomes a problem when fighting the tidal current in that area. If you don't have some one on the bow to toss the attendants a line your not going to dock against that south bound current unless you have Zeus. The space between the piles needs to be built in so you can choose which side you want to use dependent on the current.

I plan to make these reccomendations to the city next week.

 

[LmannyR]

those are some good observations. Thanks for the heads up! Hopefully they will implement the issues sooner than later.