Federal, state, and local officials joined Derecktor staff on November 13 for the Derecktor Ft. Pierce groundbreaking. The long-awaited ceremony comes shortly after receiving permits to transform the former commercial Port of Fort Pierce in Florida into a refit and service yard. The yard will handle some of the world’s largest sailing and power yachts.
Derecktor management and St. Lucie County officials signed a contract for the site in April 2019. Some yachts already checked in since then for minor service. However, the major plans, including creating a haul-out basin, required review from more than one federal agency. Additionally, county and city officials needed to sign off on them. While formal approval was anticipated several months ago, delays, including the pandemic, interfered. Authorization finally came last month from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the St. Lucie County Board of County Commissioners, and the City of Fort Pierce.
This clears the way for creating a new haul-out basin by excavating an area measuring 220 feet by 50 feet (67 meters by 15 meters). The excavation is within an existing, and ageing, concrete wharf. Intended for megayachts up to about 250 feet (76 meters), including sailing superyachts, the slipway will enlist the help of the world’s largest mobile boat lift. With a 1,500-ton capacity, it, too, is delayed due to the pandemic, arriving in early December. Overall, from start to finish, the slipway should take about five months.
Other infrastructure work can now start, too. Repairing existing bulkheads, for example, and transforming the ageing Indian River Terminal into workshops are top priorities.
U.S. Representative Brian Mast was among those using a golden shovel during the Derecktor Ft. Pierce groundbreaking. “This will be one of those places that people will be looking at worldwide to get their repairs, their work, their upgrade done,” he says. “That’s an incredible thing to say about what this is going to do for this community.”
This is the fourth Derecktor Shipyards facility along the U.S. East Coast. “I pledge to you that Fort Pierce stands ready to cooperate in making this and the whole port area successful,” says Linda Hudson, the city’s mayor.
Derecktor Shipyards derecktor.com
Todd E. Nelson
This is a satire, isn’t it? Derecktor’s has been BSing the people of St. Lucie County for over 2 years now. I get the same smell I used to get at a dairy farm not far from my parents’ house when I was a kid when I read this. Let us start with the size of the lift. Derecktor’s promised the largest strap lift in the world at 1600 tons, and that is part of what got them the lease. The 1500 ton lift, listed in the article, has been being built by Marine Travelift for a number of years, so that claim of being the world’s largest is bunk. Very recently, the bank that is going to hold the loan asked the county to agree not to put a lien on the 1400 ton lift Derecktor’s was trying to get a loan for if Derecktor’s defaulted on the lease, like they did in Bridgeport CT. This is the same lift Derecktor’s has been telling the world they have already purchased and will be delivered before the end of the year. The same one they showed pictures of in several publications. The promises of when the yard will have the lift working keep getting pushed back every month. The lift well is too small to need a 1400 ton lift because the liftwell is too small to fit a yacht over 1100 tons. . The two environmental permits, the DEP and Army Corps of Engineers, have major discrepancies between them that will have to be resolved before any construction and engineering permits can be applied for. The reason to dig a hole was because a 70 foot wide lift well, which is needed for a 1600 ton yacht to fit in, cannot be installed over the existing water. At 50 feet wide, there is room to put a pier 50 feet from the south side of the main pier, saving the almost $2 million it will cost to just remove the dirt from the pier. No one has given any indication of where the over 12000 cubic yards of dirt will be deposited, or any input from the railroad, which will have almost 500 loads of dirt being run across its tracks. The list of lies and falsehoods goes on and on. The best is who is going to loan a company with 5 bankruptcies almost $10,000,000.00 to dig a hole in someone else’s property, lowering the value of that property for an unnecessary hole in the ground? Add to that a $45,000,000.00 lawsuit against Derecktor-Gunnell, the Derecktor owned entity that owns the Dania Beach facility, for fraud. The corporations may be separate, but the ownership and management of both yards is the same people. Legally, the 2 yards may be separate, but there is not a lending institution that doesn’t see them as the same. The hollow promise, just like all the other promises, of having this lift operating soon, brings out that dairy farm smell again. According to the first series of lies, the lift was supposed to be installed and working by September 1, 2020, then operating before the end of the year, Now we are being told it will be in June of 2021. My supposition is that Derecktor’s does not have the loan for the lift yet. because what lending institution is going to lend money for a piece of equipment which does not have the ability to employ that piece of equipment. The bank wants to get paid, so they will insist on a financial commitment to get the liftwell dug and the infrastructure to move the boats off of the pier, before releasing any funds.. That financial commitment is going to have to be somewhere between $8 million and $10 million, and, according to several acquaintances in the mortgage brokerage business, that is not going to happen. The information I have given here is just the tip of the iceberg. If interested, there is lots more. I can be contacted at toddnelson411@yahoo.com