The center of Chicago lastly has a brand new marina, able to accommodating a variety of yachts to 183-foot (55.8-meter) megayachts. Simply in time for the summer time, the Navy Pier Marina has formally opened alongside the famend landmark bearing the identical identify.
Courting to 1916, Navy Pier has seen navy use throughout each world wars and reworked into an leisure house. In reality, the ChicagoFest summer-music competition from the late Nineteen Seventies into the early Nineteen Eighties helped entice guests from across the nation. A reconstruction mission within the early Nineteen Nineties led to the addition of the equally iconic Ferris wheel. Often known as the Centennial Wheel, it enhances artwork installations, a museum, retailers, eating places, and extra. Guests additionally flock right here each Fourth of July for the fireworks show over Lake Michigan.
Megayachts such because the 198-foot (60-meter) Blue Moon have frequented Chicago over the a long time, docking elsewhere within the metropolis. Notably, the thought for Navy Pier Marina—Chicago’s solely devoted transient marina—first got here up in 2015. Randy Podolsky, an area developer, proposed it. “Ever since I started boating in 1983, I’ve felt Navy Pier was the best website for a marina,” he says. Bureaucratic and political crimson tape, although, led to delays.
The north aspect of the pier, the place the marina sits, already benefitted considerably from a big rock breakwater. Nevertheless, wave motion and wakes might nonetheless enter, creating uncomfortable chop. Subsequently, the ability features a 300-foot-long (91.44-meter-long) concrete wave-attenuating breakwater. A wave fence is in place, too. These defend the floating aluminum docks additional sitting in opposition to the pier itself.
Total, the marina provides short-term and in a single day dockage and is pet-friendly. Whereas it has energy and water hookups, pumpout providers, wifi, and 24-hour safety, it doesn’t provide on-site fueling. This is because of an adjoining water-treatment plant.
“We’ve got constructed a very nice marina the place leisure boaters can lastly expertise all the pieces Navy Pier has to supply,” Podolsky says.
Navy Pier Marina navypiermarina.com
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