By Taylor M. Coffman
Herald Correspondent
Earlier this year, the city of Sanford officially approved plans to rebuild the city’s marina and repair the damage caused by Hurricane Ian in 2022. While the announcement itself was a welcome one, it left many residents wondering what had taken so long, and when the rebuilding’s staggering price tag of $20 million was revealed, it sparked a small amount of outrage, as well as questions on where the city was planning on getting that much money for the project.
In June 2022, the city of Sanford took the marina back from the people who had been previously leasing it, with plans to purchase and improve the marina having been in place since late 2021, according to Sanford Mayor Art Woodruff.
“We set aside a total of $12 million dollars for several projects, and part of it was the marina,” he said in an interview. “We did a master plan [for what we wanted to do], and then Ian did all the damage, so on top of everything we wanted to do now we just had to repair everything.”
The damage done by Hurricane Ian brought the marina project total up to $20 million, money that’s already “sitting in the bank” according to Woodruff. FEMA has given the city $6.4 million in grants, and while that’s some help, it’s also been the main cause of the delay in the marina rebuilding project.
If Sanford already has the $20 million, and Hurricane Ian struck three years ago, many city residents have been wondering why rebuilding the marina has taken as long as it has. The answer, according to Mayor Woodruff, is that FEMA has taken a very long time to give the project its approval, including a hurdle last December where they announced they wanted to “start over” and review the case from the start.
Meanwhile, the marina project was left high and dry, since FEMA would only reimburse them for repairs done after they had given their approval - a situation Woodruff described as “frustrating”, to say the least, though he otherwise describes them as cooperative in every other aspect.
Given that FEMA’s approval seemed a long way away and the city already had the money for the project, Woodruff recalls a point in the process where he was willing to proceed and repair the marina without FEMA’s assistance, stating that “we can’t let it sit the way it is.”
Luckily, around that same time, FEMA finally approved the $6.4 million payment - the city could request more, but they would have to enter an appeals process, which Woodruff confirms they have since done.
“We’re going ahead with the project now, and still working with FEMA to try and get the reimbursement for the rest of it,” he said. “But that’s still going to take about a year to do the engineering and permitting, so it’s still going to take a long time.”
Long time or not, it’s a relief to see the city of Sanford finally making some kind of forward progress on the marina repairs, which have been stagnant since 2022. Mayor Woodruff declined to comment on the odds of the appeals process.
