In keeping up with the market, hospitality developer transforms marina industry

A developer and property owner building a high-tech marina, a project worth up to $20 million, have learned being first isn’t easy.

By Mark Gordon
| 6:00 a.m. March 20, 2020
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Stefania Pifferi. Fort Myers-based GCM Contracting Solution, led by Robert Brown, is building an automated storage and retrieval technology system at Gulf Star Marina on Fort Myers Beach.

Development

Southwest Florida hospitality developer Todd Carroll didn’t set out, per se, to be one of the first people in the world with a so-called robo-dock, a fully automated dry stack marina. He had nothing against a good forklift or crane.

Carroll just knew the boat storage facility his company had owned in Lee County for a few decades, a steel barn that dates back to the early 1970s, was in dire shape. “It was ready to fall down,” says Carroll of the Gulf Star Marina, next to Doc Ford’s Rum Bar and Grill on Fishermans Wharf, a tiny sliver of Fort Myers Beach.