With boats getting bigger, money is flowing into marinas
By MURRAY CARPENTER
Tanned and tousled after a sailing regatta on Narragansett Bay, more than a thousand people gathered last month at a large marina in Newport, Rhode Island, for three days of competitive racing, dockside dinners and drinks aboard superyachts.Events like these bring together people who, naturally, love boats. Safe Harbor Newport Shipyard, which hosted the gathering, turned its marina into an entertainment destination for the spectators and potential year-round customers.
As the rich get richer, their boats are also getting bigger and more expensive. And all of those vessels need places to dock and get repairs.
Private equity firm Blackstone sees opportunity in the booming boat business. In the past two years, the company has been on a buying spree of scarce waterfront infrastructure. Its infrastructure fund went from owning zero marinas in 2024 to roughly 200 marinas today — more than anyone in the world.
The company paid $5.6 billion in early 2025 for Safe Harbor, which at the time owned and operated 138 marinas in the United States and Puerto Rico, including dozens of marinas from Maryland to Maine as well as the Caribbean’s largest in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. It also runs nine marinas on the Mediterranean, catering to large yachts in places like St. Tropez, Antibes and Monaco.
In November, Blackstone bought the largest marina in Annapolis, Maryland, and a Maine shipyard on upper Penobscot Bay. Last month, it announced plans to buy 65 marinas and storage facilities from MarineMax for $1.5 billion. The deal is expected to close by the end of this year.
In recent years, Blackstone has snapped up businesses known for their recurring cash flow, in industries like HVAC services and rental housing. Heidi Boyd, senior managing director for Blackstone Infrastructure, said the marinas were a natural fit for its infrastructure fund.
“A lot of what we do is buying businesses that have been around for a long time, and have a natural scarcity to them, like an airport, like a port, like a marina,” she said.
As Safe Harbor adds marinas, it is emphasizing its membership model. Boaters who rent a slip at one of its marinas are considered members, eligible for free stays at any of the other marinas in its network.
But having a corporation like Blackstone buy often independently-run marinas, potentially upgrading and expanding them to bring more billionaire yacht owners to the area has made some boaters and local residents uneasy.
Some residents have written letters to city and county officials asking how they plan to deal with potential noise disturbances, increased traffic and electricity demands, and safe fuel storage for megayachts.
When Safe Harbor announced plans this year to expand operations at a smaller marina in Wareham, Massachusetts, it faced pushback from some residents.
James Morrissey retired to Wareham in 2019 after vacationing and sailing in the area for decades. He said the marina, which abuts his property, was encroaching deeper and deeper into the residential neighborhood, especially with its recent proposal for a 42,000-square-foot building.
“We thought it was way too big, way too large-scale, and it would change the character of the neighborhood,” Morrissey said while sitting on his porch as a sea breeze moderated a sultry afternoon last month. “It would be like me standing in the backyard and looking at the Fenway Green Monster.”
Safe Harbor has since withdrawn its application for the project, said Christine Santos, a conservation agent for Wareham, “but the Wareham residents still have questions, comments and concerns if, or when, they may come in front of us again.”
In response to the criticism, a Blackstone spokesperson said that Wareham was “an attractive location with lots of customer interest, but we prioritize working with the local community we serve and listening to all potential concerns.”
In Rockland, Maine, Kyle Swan, who has worked as a boat captain and commercial diver, is concerned that the marina Safe Harbor bought there in 2020 could outgrow its corner of the harbor.
“I’m worried about the traffic, and the busyness of Safe Harbor, and the needs of the people who have these big megayachts,” Swan said. “There’s a load of money in this business now, and the small guy is getting shifted out.”
It seems to him, these days, that “it’s all the big yachts and the big money that’s really cooking,” he said.
Blackstone is not alone in its quest to amass a portfolio of marinas. InfraVia Capital Partners, a private equity firm, bought a group of 28 marinas in nine countries from Spain to the United Arab Emirates, which have 1,000 superyacht berths among its 14,300 total. Bain Capital is also in the marina game through a partnership with BlueWater Marinas.
Andrew Cantor, who represents owners selling marinas at the commercial real estate services company Colliers, said that marina consolidation began to gather steam about a decade ago. He said a boat-buying boom during the COVID-19 pandemic made marinas more valuable, accelerating the trend.
Jason Spalding, a marina adviser, broker and consultant at International Marina Services, said he thought Blackstone would keep acquiring marinas “to continue to feed the machine.”
“I’d be surprised if there was any full-service marina greater than 200 slips that hasn’t been approached by Safe Harbor or some of these larger entities over the past five years,” he said.
A decade ago, there were perhaps four main buying groups among the marina clusters, Spalding said. He is now tracking 42 buying groups in the United States and Canada, including 14 that own or manage a dozen marinas or more.
“You are going to see continued interest by the private equity groups, continued interest by the infrastructure funds, continued consolidation,” Spalding said. “There’s so much demand, and such limited supply.”
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