Pontoon Saloon Gets Docks Close to City Center

Pontoon Saloon is the main commercial passenger vessel outfit on the Cumberland River in Nashville. “One of the unique challenges of this river is there’s no dock space within 16 miles of downtown Nashville where you can store a vessel,” said Andrew Ostrowski, the company founder. “Being a main tourism destination, we want to be downtown to pick up and drop off our passengers. So we had kind of planned over time to be able to build our own space, to be able to store our boats, get gas and pump out, all those things. So we contracted with Tiger Docks to help us build that out.”

The floating dock is located right off the main channel of the river about two miles from the downtown municipal docks. The dock features stiff arms that connect it to the shore and concrete paver decking. It is relatively small – 100 feet by 12 feet – but provides all the space that the business needs to dock its three commercial boats and accommodate the desired services.

“We save a ton of money on fuel, transportation, and maintenance, and also have the opportunity to be able to run our tours out of our dock location,” said Ostrowski. There may also be additional docks in the future. “We have long-term plans to build out on that land, a bar and a marina where we can rent things out.”