Renovation Underway at Lewis & Clark Marina

Located on Lewis and Clark Lake in the southeast corner of South Dakota, Lewis & Clark Marina is a full-service facility that serves boaters in its home state and in Nebraska, Iowa, and southwestern Minnesota. The marina has now embarked on a multi-year renovation project to update its docks.
The marina’s 409 slips currently range in size from 18 feet to 50 feet, and include some spots for jet skis as well. “The old docks are steel frame with Styrofoam sprayed into them, so they’re not very environmentally friendly. They’re dilapidated and need to be changed out,” explained Heath Denney, the marina’s general manager.

Because the demand for slips is high – there are more than 500 people on the waiting list – the marina also wants to add more slips. Its solution has been to change the marina’s configuration, so that the docks that previously ran east and west will now run north and south. The new layout has created space for 83 additional boats, and they will be single slips rather than double slips. The slip sizes will now range from 24 feet to 50 feet.

Denney said the new configuration will help the marina meet the increased demand for larger slips. “Boating has really changed; people are now buying a cabin on the lake, and going with a day boat like a pontoon or open bow boat,” he explained. The marina will also be able to accommodate the 20-foot to 40-foot sailboats that are popular on the lake.

Tiger Docks is building and installing the new docks in phases. In the spring of 2021, the construction team relocated some of the existing docks and built a retaining wall and a berm with bulkheads for the docks. “We installed two new 36-foot docks, one covered and one uncovered,” said Denney. He anticipates that work will be completed by summer 2023.

Most docks in the renovated marina will be uncovered, but Lewis & Clark Marina will eventually offer three full-covered docks with a total of about 150 slips.

Throughout the renovation the marina will work hard to ensure that all existing slip holders retain a spot for their boats. “The reason why we’re only doing a few docks at a time is that we have a very short season, and we don’t want any of our slip holders to have to sit out a season…The biggest goal is for us to keep everybody happy. We want our current slip holders to understand that we’re not doing this just to bring new people in; we’re doing it because the marina needed to be upgraded,” said Denney.

Some of the work has been challenging. Many of the existing slips have boat lifts, and moving those lifts to the right spots is complicated, Denney said. The process has been slowed a bit because the marina owners need to work with two government entities on the project: the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks department, which leases the marina site to the owner, and the Army Corps of Engineers which oversees any water issues in the reservoir lake.

“We started construction on the project during the pandemic, when steel was hard to come by and the pricing was crazy. Even flotation materials were hard to get,” added Denney. “Plus, because South Dakota has different engineering requirements for docks due to snow loads, the docks had to be made of a beefier metal and structural frame. Tiger Docks has had to fabricate everything as we order it, rather than using any kind of stock material.”

The boating season at Lewis & Clark Marina runs from May 1st to October 15th. Once the boats are out of the water, the installation of new docks will resume. During the months of winter freeze – usually December through late February or early March – Tiger Docks will fabricate more docks and then install them in the spring of 2022.

Despite the additional slips, Lewis & Clark will not be able to meet all the demand. Denney believes that the marina’s popularity is due, at least in part, to the many amenities it offers, including electric, water, pump-out services, and a complete service department. The marina also has storage on site (mostly outdoor) and a travel lift to move boats in and out of the water.