Brunswick Landing Marina Spends Decades Putting People First

The mission at Brunswick Landing Marina in Brunswick, Georgia, is simply to assure boaters have the most pleasurable experience possible. The owners and staff at the marina have exceeded that goal through both their customer and community service, which is why they were chosen as the recipient of the Marina Dock Age 2023 Marina of the Year Customer Service award.

The Early Days
The Torras family, who owns the marina, has deep roots in Brunswick, going back four generations to when Rosendo Torras, the great-great-grandfather of marina manager Michael Torras, first arrived from Spain to set up a trade route for timber. The next generation put an even bigger mark on the community. Torras said his great grandfather, Fernando J. Torras, an engineer educated at Georgia Tech, was tasked to find the best route to build a series of roads and bridges to connect the barrier island St. Simons to mainland Brunswick. He engineered the design for the current causeway, which was constructed in 1924, having taken just 14 months to complete—a remarkable engineering feat for the time.

In 1978, Fernando’s son, Robert M. Torras Sr. purchased a manufacturing plant on the historic downtown Brunswick waterfront. The property, owned by the railroad company, was surrounded by neglected land, and abandoned barges and shrimp boats filled the East River. To expand the manufacturing business, more land was needed, but the railroad had no interest in dividing parcels. Torras Sr. ended up purchasing the whole lot, about 100 acres.

Torras Sr.’s son, Bob, Jr., joined the team, and plans for a marina began to come together. Many in the community were skeptical, believing there would not be enough demand in the community to support a marina. The family persisted, seeing the potential of the area to attract visitors and not just neighbors. With support from local business leaders and legislators, the Torras family spent 10 years working through the permitting process with the Army Corps of Engineers and Department of Natural Resources to get approval to build the first dock.

Knowing a marina will not stay afloat without customers, highly discounted dockage was offered for the first three years to entice boaters to give the facility a chance. Help also came when the marina secured a multi-year dockage contract with a local gambling cruise ship that brought visitors and locals down to the waterfront. “They could start picturing the site as a marina and the convenience of keeping a boat here,” Torras said.

The marina filled that first dock and proceeded to build two docks at a time every two to three years, based on need. Their motto of always putting customer service first paid off. “We’re now at 17 docks, home to 400 boats, but only about 5% of our slip holders are locals. The original critics were right, but now we have boating customers from all over the world,” Torras said.

Building Community
Growing a marina from one dock to 17 and attracting a worldwide audience does not come by chance. For the Torras family, customer satisfaction has been the number one goal since the marina opened and, to them, customers are not just their slip holders but also the wider community of Brunswick. The family established the Torras Foundation in 2018 as a private charitable foundation built from the family’s hard work and success in the area. Through the foundation, the family can give back to the community that has done so much for them.

“Robert Torras and his family have a long history of giving back to the community in many ways, but by establishing the Torras Foundation, they have ensured such an investment will continue for many decades,” said Daren Pietsch, president of the marina and other Torras businesses.

With four generations of Torrases being graduates of Georgia Tech, it seemed fitting to start with a scholarship there. The family gave $1 million to the college to establish a scholarship for students in Brunswick who had the talent but not the financial means to attend the school. To reach more students, another scholarship was created to pay tuition and fees each year for 10 local children to attend the local College of Coastal Georgia. Finally, in recognition of the service the local law enforcement provides, a scholarship was created to send police officers or their family members to the local college as well.

Beyond helping students, the Torras Family Foundation also distributes funds to close to 30 local non-profits each year that do everything from marsh clean-ups to feeding the homeless.

While giving back to the outside Brunswick community is an ingredient in the Torras family’s mission, giving back to the internal community of marina customers is also a priority. Part of the attraction to those customers is that Brunswick Landing is a rare breed of marina that caters to liveaboards, welcoming them with open arms for the sense of community they help bring to the facility. Torras said the people who live at the marina 24/7 see things that could be improved or potential changes he might never consider, and he welcomes the ideas and feedback on how he can do better.

This thinking extends to all the marina customers. “I tell customers they can contact me directly any time about anything. Customers feel they can be heard by ownership and get a response quickly,” he said. He’s had requests for things from laundry hooks to a meat smoker, and in each instance, he responded immediately and put the requested items in place. “A tremendous amount of money goes back into the marina, but what we spend goes toward making this a place people want to be and where they want to stay,” Torras said.

Going above and beyond to ensure customer satisfaction, Torras has an alert on his phone for any time the marina receives less than a 5-star rating. When he gets the alert, he immediately looks up the person’s reservation to find a phone number and calls to find out what could have improved the visit. “They are almost always shocked to hear from an owner so quickly. It humanizes us as a company and lets them know how much their individual experience matters to us,” Torras said.

Recognizing that building camaraderie within the marina encourages people to stay longer, the marina holds social nights three times a week and hosts catered parties for all major holidays. Conveniently, their newly hired event coordinator lives on site. “We look for any chance we can to get people together whether for National Margarita Day or Labor Day. The more often we get people together, the less likely they are to leave,” Torras said. The events are also a way for management and staff to interact directly with customers beyond daily dock walks. “Our staff knows how we feel about customer service, so they treat our marina clients just as they see management does,” he commented.

Renovations
“We believe that boat owners purchased their vessel to have a pleasurable experience, and it is the duty of the marina to assure that they have the most pleasurable experience possible,” Torras said. To meet this goal, the marina continues to make improvements to the facilities.

Over the past several years, the marina has added a new wave attenuator that doubles as a mega-yacht dock, remodeled the yacht club and bathrooms and is currently replacing all the hardware to help prevent hurricane damage. A $25,000 grant from the local Downtown Development Authority allowed for the expansion of one of the bathroom facilities, adding four new toilets and showers and a laundry center, which is complementary to boaters.

Looking to take advantage of the equipment on site for the renovation projects, and continuing that desire to help the community, the marina used cranes and barges to remove numerous sunken shrimp boats, abandoned barges and other debris from the river. This helped create a safer and more appealing waterway for vessel traffic.

Torras’s grandfather’s land purchase may have been the key to bringing life back to Brunswick. The marina has been central to attracting visitors, many of whom come first as transient boaters and later buy vacation homes to extend their stays. Torras said many businesses in town show their appreciation for the marina by offering patrons a discount on products and services.

The marina is not the end of development for the family who still has vacant land that abuts the waterfront. Along a half mile of that stretch, they have proposed a 28-acre mixed-use development with a boardwalk that would follow the river’s edge and provide access to the waterfront for the community. Torras said they are considering condominiums, townhomes and a 220-boat drystack. “We always do projects in bite-size pieces, building slowly to see how the market responds,” Torras said. If the past is any indication, the Torras family roots will stay firmly planted in Brunswick, Georgia.