Annapolis Yacht Club members will gather at the Annapolis Waterfront Hotel on September 14 to vote on whether the club should buy Annapolis City Marina, a working waterfront property on Spa Creek that includes a public fuel dock, dozens of slips, and underground parking. Registration for the special membership meeting begins at 5:30 p.m., with the meeting itself starting at 6:30 p.m. The vote could reshape a stretch of Eastport waterfront that has operated as a commercial marina for decades.
The proposed purchase, first reported by Eye On Annapolis, would bring Annapolis City Marina — located at 410 Severn Avenue on Spa Creek — under the yacht club's ownership. The marina sits directly next to the club's Sailing Center at 510 Severn Avenue, and folding the two properties together would give the club a contiguous footprint in Eastport alongside its main clubhouse at 2 Compromise Street and its Activity Center on Sixth Street. The club's main clubhouse currently includes 30 member slips, while the Sailing Center is listed by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources as having 75 slips.
Annapolis City Marina itself advertises 90 fixed-pier slips along with short- and long-term dockage, a dock shop, a bathhouse, and parking, according to the same report from Eye On Annapolis. Its fuel dock sells both gas and diesel and can accommodate boats up to 100 feet — a capability that has made it a notable stop for larger vessels on Spa Creek. The membership meeting notice reviewed by the outlet includes no terms, timing, or purchase price for the proposed deal.
Public Access Questions Left Unanswered
What happens to the marina's public-facing functions if members approve the sale remains an open question. The membership notice does not indicate whether the marina's slips, fuel dock, and parking would remain available to the general public, nor does it spell out how the property would operate going forward, per the same report. Eastport's waterfront commercial properties, including this stretch of Severn Avenue, fall under the City of Annapolis's Waterfront Maritime zoning rules, which are designed to restrict non-maritime commercial expansion and preserve active working waterfronts, according to the City of Annapolis.
Those zoning protections exist for a reason locals are increasingly attuned to. Public access to the water in Anne Arundel County became a flashpoint after the July 2025 private closure of the Discovery Village boat ramp in Shady Side, which forced county officials to strike a deal with Parish Creek Landing Marina just to preserve public water access, as Hoodline detailed in its coverage of the county's Free River Days. Any move to privatize slips, parking, or fuel service at Annapolis City Marina would likely draw similar scrutiny from residents and city planners.
Marina Consolidation Sweeps the Chesapeake
The potential acquisition arrives amid a wave of marina consolidation across the Chesapeake Bay. Safe Harbor Marinas was the largest marina operator in the United States as of 2025, and Blackstone Infrastructure acquired the company for $5.65 billion in April of that year, according to the notice reviewed by Eye On Annapolis. Safe Harbor itself acquired Port Annapolis and Eastport Yacht Center in November 2025 — Port Annapolis includes roughly 250 slips spread across a 16-acre property. Other regional deals followed a similar pattern. Stella Marinas, working with Drake Real Estate Partners in 2025, acquired South River Marina and Turkey Point Marina & Yacht Club in Edgewater, a combined property with more than 500 wet slips and dry racks. Annapolis-headquartered Oasis Marinas has also expanded its third-party marina management business across the mid-Atlantic as institutional investors move into the sector, per DeCarbonFuse.
Eastport's commercial waterfront has already seen corporate money move in this year. Baltimore-based Atlas Restaurant Group acquired a majority stake in the neighborhood's Boatyard Bar & Grill in January, part of a broader shift toward outside ownership along Severn Avenue that Hoodline chronicled in its report on Annapolis restaurant turnover. Annapolis City Marina is also home to Carrol's Creek Cafe, an award-winning waterfront seafood restaurant that has operated on the Eastport site for more than 30 years, according to Chowhound.
Why the Timing Matters for Boaters
The vote also lands as downtown Annapolis grapples with reduced boater capacity. A multi-year City Dock Resiliency construction project running from 2026 through early 2028 has closed several municipal slips and suspended certain downtown harbor services, a squeeze Hoodline covered in its report on the roughly 400 powerboats packing the waterfront this season. That construction has pushed more demand toward private slips across Spa Creek, raising the stakes for how any change at Annapolis City Marina might affect boaters shut out of downtown moorings.
The marina business is not without costly upkeep. A City of Annapolis Maritime Task Force meeting in October 2020 found that Annapolis City Marina faced an estimated $1 million to $1.5 million in necessary capital repairs for its aging fuel dock tanks, according to city planning records. Maintaining underground fuel infrastructure and a public fuel dock capable of serving 100-foot vessels requires sustained capital investment, a cost that would presumably fall to whoever owns the property going forward.
The stakes extend beyond one club and one marina. Anne Arundel County accounts for about 10 percent of Maryland's population but is home to roughly one-third of the state's boating businesses, per the Baltimore Business Journal figures cited in the membership notice. Tourism in the county generated $4.3 billion in total economic impact in 2024, according to CBS News, while outdoor recreation including boating and fishing contributed $10.6 billion to Maryland's economy that same year, per the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. For now, the proposed purchase of Annapolis City Marina remains subject to approval by Annapolis Yacht Club members at the September 14 meeting, with no public details yet on price, timeline, or what changes members might be asked to accept.
