Mare Island will trade one
waterfront marine company for another, the area's developer announced Monday.
Mare Island Shipyard LLC,
the company that put two of the former naval shipyard's giant dry docks back
into use at the beginning of 2011, has exercised its right to end its lease
with developer Lennar Mare Island years early and is due to depart by Nov. 1,
the developer's spokesman said.
"LMI (Lennar Mare
Island) has made every effort to support and retain MISY (Mare Island Ship
Yard) and we regret the new ownership group chose to end their lease
early," Lennar Mare Island spokesman Jason Keadjian said Monday.
The new company, called
Mare Island Dry Dock, LLC, recently completed a lease for an undetermined time
period for Dry Docks 2 and 3 and will occupy the same 16 acres and existing
infrastructure as current tenant Mare Island Ship Yard has, Keadjian said. This
company will focus immediately on ship repair work, officials say.
"We've got many
things to do to be prepared and as they say in the Navy, 'hit the decks
running,' " Mare Island Dry Docks Vice President Steven Park said by phone
Monday. "We have been looking for a West Coast, and I do mean West Coast
location. We've looked for the last nearly two years for a suitable
location."
The new company hopes to
create as many as 100 jobs in its first year, and up to 300 in a five-year
period, and repair and/or maintain up to 20 ships a year, according to a Lennar
press release. Park added that it is "fundamental" to meet with and
reach out to existing employees.
Financial backing and
management for the operation comes from Philadelphia-based investment group
Dimeling, Schreiber & Park, which has a history of investing and managing
large-scale shipyard operations in Boston, Philadelphia and New York, according
to the release.
Mare Island Ship Yard LLC,
formerly Allied Defense Recycling, was still formulating a public response to
the abrupt announcement Monday and declined to comment beforehand. The company
first shared with Lennar its plans to leave in June, setting in motion a search
for a replacement tenant, Keadjian said. The Times-Herald's recent inquiries to
Mare Island Ship Yard into the company's health, prior to Lennar Mare Island's
announcement, were dismissed as inaccurate rumors.
The Mare Island company,
which opened for business in February 2011, originally touted plans to seek out
federal contracts with the U.S. Maritime Administration, or MARAD, to scrap
"mothballed" ships from the nearby Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, off
Benicia's shores.
The shipyard, however, was
only able to dismantle two of those ships, the Solon Turman and the Lincoln --
those contracts awarded on a non-competitive basis. Once up against other ship
dismantling companies, particularly those based in Texas, Mare Island Ship Yard
was unable to secure further dismantling contracts.
In fact, the ship
scrapping dynamic altered significantly during Mare Island Ship Yard's first
year -- from having the government pay for the recycling work to having
companies competing to pay millions purchase the ships outright. Mare Island
Ship Yard did, however, begin supplementing its federal hull-cleaning jobs with
other smaller ship repair and dismantling work in recent years, ideas
originally floated in the months prior to the shipyard's opening.
Mare Island Dry Dock will
neighbor historic Dry Dock 1 and Dry Dock 4, recently leased to Jerico
Products/Lind Brothers as a company expansion.
Source: Times-Herald.
By Jessica A. York. 20 August
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