After 69 years in the Garbarino family's hands, Mystic River Marina on Masons Island has a new owner. The 145-slip marina in the Stonington portion of Mystic sold for $5 million, according to property records, closing out four generations of family ownership that began when brothers Gene and Fred Garbarino dredged part of the harbor and started installing docks in 1957.
The buyer is Bluewater Mystic River LLC, an entity tied to a joint venture between Bain Capital Real Estate and BlueWater Marinas, as reported by Hartford Business Journal. The deed, recorded on September 28, shows the sale included the 3.8-acre marina property at 36 Quarry Road along with 1.33 acres of abutting land. Cambridge Savings Bank, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, issued a $9.1 million commercial mortgage in connection with the deal—nearly twice the recorded $5 million purchase price.
Mystic River Marina sits on the protected western shore of Masons Island, an area connected to the mainland by a causeway. The marina serves owners of larger coastal vessels. The site includes three buildings totaling roughly 18,400 square feet, among them a two-story structure with restaurant, office and service space, a 7,200-square-foot service building, and a 2,052-square-foot commercial building, with construction dating between 1958 and 1970.
A Family Business Built From Dredged Harbor Mud
Gene “Poppa Gene” Garbarino and his brother Fred founded the marina in 1957, dredging the site to build docks on what was then undeveloped shoreline. Gene's son Bob Garbarino, along with Skip Garbarino, acquired the marina from its founders in the late 1970s, and subsequent generations kept it in the family, with Lauren Garbarino and later Kelcey Garbarino most recently operating the business, according to BlueWater Marinas. Over the decades, the marina built out amenities including a boat parts and service department, a fuel dock, a ship store, an on-site boat brokerage, a café, a lounge and a swimming pool, serving seasonal and visiting boaters as well as those seeking winter dry storage.
The marina's upstairs restaurant space has long been home to Kitchen Little, a breakfast spot that moved there in 2012 after rising rents pushed it out of its original 400-square-foot location on Route 27 in Mystic, according to The E List. Established in the late 1970s, Kitchen Little remains a well-known local dining destination, underscoring how the marina has functioned as more than a dock for its neighbors in Mystic.
Part of a Wider Private Equity Buying Spree
The Mystic purchase was one of two acquisitions BlueWater and Bain Capital announced last month, the pair also buying Ripley Light Drystack Marina, a 220-slip facility in Charleston, South Carolina, that has operated since 1988. Together, the two deals marked the sixth and seventh acquisitions for the joint venture, according to Trade Only Today, pairing a wet-slip Northeast asset with a high-density Sunbelt drystack facility. The venture had already moved quickly earlier in the year, acquiring Kent Narrows Boatel in Maryland and Bayside Marine in Duxbury, Massachusetts, as its fourth and fifth platform additions, per BlueWater Marinas.
With the fall acquisitions, BlueWater Marinas' East Coast footprint now spans seven marinas across Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, South Carolina and Florida, including Glyn's Marina on Nantucket and Boathouse Marine Center in Florida. The company's leadership previously co-founded Atlantic Marina Holdings and PORT32 Marinas, managing more than 4,000 wet and dry slips nationwide since 2003 and claiming over 110 combined years of marina industry experience. BlueWater declined an interview request from Hartford Business Journal for its report on the sale. Bain Capital, founded in 1984 and based in Boston, says it manages approximately $225 billion in assets spanning private equity, real estate, credit and venture capital, according to its website.
Why Investors See Marinas as Prime Real Estate
The Mystic sale fits a pattern institutional investors have followed since a 2019 IRS ruling allowed marina slip and storage fees to be treated as real estate rents, giving buyers tax advantages similar to those enjoyed by traditional commercial property owners, as detailed by The Real Deal. That change helped turn marinas into attractive, REIT-like holdings for private equity, and BlueWater and Bain have said they are targeting established coastal boating markets with strong demand and limited room for competing development.
The trend extends well beyond Connecticut. Safe Harbor Marinas agreed in August to acquire boat retailer and marina operator MarineMax in a $1.5 billion deal backed by Blackstone, according to PYMNTS reporting. That transaction and the steady string of BlueWater-Bain purchases illustrate how major investment firms increasingly view scarce waterfront property as a stable, high-barrier-to-entry asset class, with Mystic River Marina now standing as the latest example of a once-local family business absorbed into that larger financial strategy.
