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Iconic Marina Battling City Takeover

News Channel 8 photo by DAVID KRAUT

Alan Phillips, whose family has run O'Neill's Marina for decades, calls a city takeover unfair.

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By PETER BERNARD

pbernard@wfla.com

Published: January 13, 2009

ST. PETERSBURG - Serious boaters in the Tampa Bay area know O'Neill's Marina well.

The business, near the north end of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, has been an icon for 55 years, giving fishermen a place to buy bait, fuel up and have their boats serviced.

Big changes might be coming, though.

The marina is run by the Phillips family under a lease with the city of St. Petersburg. That lease will expire this summer, and St. Petersburg managers have told the family the city will take over the operation.

Alan Phillips says a city takeover is unfair after 5 1/2 decades and isn't sure the city can run the marina at a profit.

"We started this marina facility from the ground up without a single taxpayer dollar,'' Phillips said. "We've done a good job. We've paid fair rent.''

Phillips is rallying help from boaters and neighbors. He wants city officials to sit down with him and negotiate a new lease. Over the years, he's sunk more than a million dollars in improvements to the marina, he says.

"It's like a child to me. It's my passion, has been for over 30 years," Phillips said.

St. Petersburg officials, though, say the marina is a valuable asset, and city operation could make it both more useful to boaters and more profitable for the city.

Chris Ballestra, St. Petersburg's downtown enterprise facilities director, points to successful marina operations at the Municipal Marina in downtown St. Petersburg, where there are more than 600 slips. He says the city will likely improve O'Neill's Marina but won't make many wholesale changes.

Ballestra says he is sensitive to the issues surrounding the marina, including a letter-writing campaign encouraging the city to let the Phillips family continue to run it.

Charter boat captain Mike Anderson, who hosts the fishing show, Reel Animals on WFLA-TV, spends several days a week at O'neill's and thinks the city should back off.

"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense if the city's already making money on the rent there, and they don't have to pay for improvement, why you'd want to go in and take it over, push a family out that's already near and dear to the fishermen's hearts," Anderson said.

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