Investors buy Tierra Verde Resort Marina

BUYER: Tierra Verde Marina Resort LLC (principal Gary Boesch), Clearwater

SELLER: A&S Tierra Verde Ventures LLC

PROPERTY: 200 Madonna Blvd., Tierra Verde,

PRICE: $14.43 million, (mortgage remains)

SELLER: Scy LLC

PRICE: $1 million, (mortgage remains)

PROPERTY: additional property

LAW FIRM ON DEED: Johnson Pope Bokor Ruppel & Burns LLP

PLANS, DESCRIPTION: A Clearwater investment group purchased a mortgage to cover the Tierra Verde Resort Marina and has taken over ownership.

The investment group, which includes local businessmen Gary Boesch and Christopher Longrie, declined to comment on the mortgage purchase price.

The 50-year-old property features boat slips, a hotel, a restaurant, and residential buildings. The marina portion features 114 wet slips and 151 high-and-dry slips.

The investors plan to demolish all the existing structures, except for the high-and-dry building. It then plans to develop a second 151-slip high-and-dry building and a 10,000-square-foot restaurant building.

“The residential space there is just not financially viable,” says Longrie, president of the investment group.

The marina business model will focus exclusively on rentals. The group rebranded the facility as the Tierra Verde Marina Resort.

Longrie says the investor group already owns four marinas on the Gulf Coast and hopes to acquire several more in the region in the near future.

“There is a phenomenal business opportunity right now,” he says. “They are severely undervalued. The shift away from boating has hurt a lot of marinas, which allows us to pick them up for next to nothing and hold them until things pick up again. There's been a very slight uptick already.”

The purchase was self-financed.