Harbor West Yacht Club is getting a makeover.

Last month, the Harbor West Condo Association approved a proposal to launch a full-scale renovation of its 158-slip marina. The project will modernize the docks, upgrade the electrical systems, and replace a crumbling retaining wall – all, ideally, in time for the summer 2027 boating season.

“Starting in October, we are going to tear out every single stick of lumber in the marina, and it's all going to be replaced with brand-new floating dock systems,” says Craig Witt, a Harbor West Yacht Club board member. “We’re talking all new infrastructure, all new electrical pedestals, everything you can imagine. It's going to be state of the art.”

Ed Sands, another Harbor West board member, says the consensus among owners was that “this place is a real jewel of a marina, but it’s also tired.”

“We felt the time had come for a renovation, and that if we didn’t do it now, the cost of this type of project was only going to go up,” Sands tells The Ticker.

Witt concurs, noting that Harbor West’s history dates all the way back to the 1950s, when it first took shape as “a boat servicing basin.”

“The West End Tavern building was built by a developer named Mike Wills, who built it to sell and service boats in the man-made basin here,” says Witt. “Years before that, the basin had been the hub for logging activity and things like that. There was a manufacturing facility on the south side, where CentrePointe is right now, and the basin was a mess. It was dirty. It was full of byproducts of construction. They came in and started excavating it and digging it out and dredging it, and it started to develop into a marina.”

According to Witt, “the original main piers and finger piers” of the marina are all still in place today.

“Which means we have lumber that’s been sitting in the marina for 70-some years, getting beat up by ice and thaw and everything else,” he says.

While the Yacht Club has “invested in measures over the years” to keep things from falling apart, including replacing many of the pilings that hold the docks up, the time for maintenance has come and gone.

“Nails are coming out of the docks at this point, and it’s just a mess,” Witt says.

Demolition is set to begin in mid-October, with the goal of having the new floating docks in place and ready for use by May 1, 2027. One of the benefits of using floating docks, Sands says, is the ability to “build off site” and then install at a later date, which will allow much of the work to occur during the winter.

In addition to trading out the docks, the renovation will replace the marina’s west retaining wall, which Witt says has borne the brunt of stormwater runoff from M-22 for years.

“We noticed, when a Team Elmer’s wheel loader came down in that area during the M-22 reconstruction, that there were some cracks in the concrete,” Witt says of the wall.

Also on the to-do list is a total electrical upgrade for the marina, which Witt says is currently drastically “underpowered.”

“When the marina was built 50 years ago, boats didn't have the systems they have today,” Witt laughs. “Now you're getting these brand-new boats that require 50 amps of power and are running three air conditioners and a refrigerator. It's a significant change.”

One thing that won’t be part of the project? Extra boat slips. While Witt and Sands both acknowledge the high demand and lengthy wait lists for marina spots in Traverse City, the ownership structure of Harbor West makes an expansion all but impossible.

“We are one of the only marinas on the Great Lakes that actually owns a deed to the bottomlands of our marina,” Witt explains. “Each of us, as members, actually have a piece of real estate, whereas most other marinas, you have a big basin and you lease that land from the state of Michigan so you can park your boat in a slip there. And because these are owned pieces of real estate, we can’t manipulate the harbor to add or subtract slips. Everything has to go back in its exact location.”

Still, Sands expects the renovation will lead to a significant boost in buyer interest – and thereby, property value – for Harbor West slips. It’s part of the reason, he says, that HOA members consented to an assessment that will see each owner shoulder a chunk of the hefty $8.2 million price tag.

“Somebody who is looking for a slip, if they're going to invest a six-figure sum, they'd like to know what it's going to look like over the next 10 years when they're using it,” Sands says. “They’d like to know that it's not decaying or suffering from electrical noncompliance.”