Bon Secour Village Marina

MRD Associates, Inc. was retained to provide marina consulting services for the Bon Secour Village Marina located on the Intracoastal Waterway. MRD’s initial task was to assist the Master Planner Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) to develop the signature waterfront to ensure the marina layout and the transition from the uplands to the marina basin was functional and cost-effective for the given physical conditions. The result of our collaboration was a marina providing 60 wet slips for vessels up to 57 feet in length which is centrally located within the 1,000 acres to serve as the focal to the pedestrian-friendly town. The second phase consists of a smaller boat basin and a dry storage facility.

The design challenges resolved by MRD engineers were to accommodate the considerable grade change of 30+/- feet from the main street to the bottom of the dredged basin. This was accomplished by engineering a system of tiered bulkheads, retaining walls and shoreline revetments. The retaining walls for the pedestrian ramps required an intricate analysis and design process resulting in a series of anchoring systems with multiple tie-rods at a varying angles and heights. The second challenge was to design the northern bulkhead and retaining wall just water-ward of the town’s two tallest building towers. The issue was the towers would be the last structures built and would not be designed for 10+ years. As such, MRD’s marina structural engineers worked closely with the developer’s building structural engineers to design and construct cost-effective walls to accommodate a wide range of building foundations.