Salpare Bay Marina

Location: Portland area

Owner/developer: Salpare Bay LLC

Project team: Bellingham Marine Industries, general and concrete contractor, architect, structural engineer; Ferndale Ready Mix & Gravel, ready-mix supplier

Salpare Bay Marina includes 193 boat slips and an adjoining condominium complex. Slips range from 30 to 55 feet, and a side-tie area can accommodate vessels up to 222 feet.

The marina was made with Bellingham Marine’s Unifloat docks, which require 25 percent lighter concrete than traditional mixes. Lightweight aggregates were used to achieve that.

A critical part of the float system is to maintain a consistent freeboard throughout the marina. That required tight tolerances in the mixing and batching stages of the concrete. Every load was checked to see if the unit weight requirement was met.

The project included an architectural feature that is rarely used in the float industry — stamped concrete. More than 40,000 square feet of concrete dock space was stamped with an ashlar stone pattern and then colored gray.

The marina’s centerpiece is a two-story floating building that contains the harbormaster’s office, as well as restrooms, showers, laundry facilities and a clubhouse for tenants.

The entire marina is anchored by 75 concrete piles, each measuring 18 inches square and 72 feet long. Concrete was selected for the piles because of its ability to resist the environmental elements that can destroy other types of pile systems.