The Pilot News - Heineman’s Portside talk sparks discussion

Heineman said he and Bailey worked together on Bass Lake in the 1970s, going their separate ways after high school with Heineman staying in the area and Bailey headed to Indianapolis, though both men continued to work in the marine industry.
In 1985, Heineman came to Culver to work at the Culver Marina, where he stayed for 17 years, 8 of them as a service manager. When he learned in 1994 that Bailey had moved back to the area, he recruited his old friend to work at the marina. In May of 2002, the two partnered to create Portside Marina, renting out 8,000 square feet in a building at Culver’s west gateway that was owned by David Weinberg and had houses his wallpaper plant in its last incarnation. “We thought that would be more than enough room,” said Heineman prophetically.
“We didn’t really have plan. We thought if we had 50 people (working there) we could have holidays and weekends off, which we never get! One I did get was the birth of my daughter.”
Heineman described a workday that began around 4 a.m. with crews putting piers in around 8. “About 11 to midnight, we would finish our day, test the boats and pull the next day’s work in for the next morning.”
In 2002, Portside hired its first employee; by that fall, with 75 boats in its care, the company had well exceeded its goal of maintaining 50 boats, and the crew winterized over 250 boats that year.
By 2003, Portside had begun selling pontoon and ski boats, and manufacturing piers, the latter endeavor involving only parts from area companies, mostly in Marshall County, according to Heineman.
In the autumn of 2003, Heineman and Bailey began to wonder where they would store all of those boats if Weinberg sold the building, so they began the process of purchasing the property, with 150 boats stored there when they closed on the building that fall. “We didn’t have a business plan, we just work on fear,” Heineman chuckled. “We just mortgaged our houses; we have to work hard!”
The business continued to grow. Heineman says they sell 40 to 50 pontoon boats a year and around 20 come back for storage. “This past fall, we stored 420 boats, 365 boat lifts, and maintained 96 piers. We employ 13 people full time, with the number growing to 16 to 18 in the summer. We cover lakes in Bremen, Warsaw, Valparaiso, and Plymouth.”
When asked about the company’s plans for growth, Heineman mentioned that Portside had been turned down by Culver’s Board of Zoning Appeals last year on the company’s request for a zoning variance in order to expand its facilities to the north.
“We rent a building, and rent doubled from last year to this,” he said, citing supply and demand as the reason (“They know we need it.”). “We need to have them (boats) more on site. We work on these boats all winter…our last plan is to move to a different site with more room.”
Culver building inspector Russ Mason, who took part in the BZA meetings on Portside’s variance, explained that the problem was the expansion’s proximity to a residential area, in this case the trailer court on West Jefferson Street in Culver. Besides Portside’s request that their structure be 45 feet high, as opposed to the ordinance standard height of 35 feet, the owners of the trailer court objected to the expansion, said Mason. “The BZA doesn’t have to agree with property owners in its vote,” he said. “But they have criteria they have to follow.”
Asked about the relationship of Culver’s Plan Commission to the BZA and its decisions, Mason elaborated, “The planning commission’s responsibility is to follow the comprehensive plan and set ordinances with regards to planning and zoning.”
The BZA, said Mason, is to hear arguments from those who feel the plan commission’s rules are causing a problem. “One of the things I’m running into,” he said, “is that it’s been seven years since we’ve had a major change to the zoning ordinances. The height thing of 35 feet is all the time. You can’t build a house with 10 foot ceilings and keep it at 35 feet.”
Mason, however, also offered some perspective on the importance of zoning ordinances. “The intent of the comprehensive plan was to have organized growth. If you didn’t have regulations that say industry has to be so many feet from a house, think of what you’d have.”
Mason asked Heineman if he could work out a way to expand the marina to the west, rather than the north, which he said would eliminate any residential conflicts. “People would work with you if you had anything you could do on that side,” Mason said. “You would only be facing a height variance.”
Heineman said the company has considered such an expansion, but faces a six-foot grade downward to the west of the existing building. “The building we had plans for, the plans cost $15,000,” Heineman explained, adding that new plans would have to be made to build to the west, since the original plan allowed workers to travel from the old building into the new without having to go outside.
He also noted that he has met with Fulton County’s Economic Development Foundation, which is offering Portside incentives to move its operation to that county, a site he says would actually be slightly closer – and with fewer stop signs -- to Lake Maxinkuckee’s west shore boat launch than the marina’s present location.
“Fulton County would love to woo you away,” said Ginny Munroe, in the audience.
Audience member Grant Munroe asked about Portside’s economic relationship to the Culver community, to which Heineman replied that the company’s payroll is just over $300,000, with fuel purchases made locally from Culver’s BP station at around $30,000 last year.
Answering another question from Munroe, Heineman affirmed that his tax money goes to Marshall County and Culver. He also said leaving would be problematic, but might be necessary. “(When we moved in), they tore everything out doing it (the marina building) as it is now. It would be a hassle to move, but if we don’t have a place for the boats, we risk losing revenue.”