CANTON, Md. — TheLighthouse Point Marina is a key area in Baltimore’s outer harbor for boaters to park their vessels.
“And so our phone was ringing a lot in early March because people were looking for a place to go and literally the news of the bridge collapsed and the phones went silent," says Joel Schlossberg.
Joel Schlossberg, owner of Lighthouse Port Marina, says the months following the collapse, the company hardly got any business.
“It set us back really a full year in terms of ramping up our business," he says.
Since the port was closed for majority of the boating season, boaters who were originally planning to dock or pass through took their boats to other places.
Also, the boats already docked couldn’t move from where they were.
It wasn’t just boaters who felt the change.
“We hired less dock hands than we would normally hire. The waitstaff here at the restaurant got less hours than they normally would have just because of the business and the traffic wasn’t like it would have normally been," says Schlossberg.
But the marina was able to help out other businesses after the collapse, it held a fundraiser at its dock restaurant.
“To benefit the Maryland Tough Baltimore Strong Key Bridge Foundation. The money that we raised from that, which was several thousand dollars, went to help folks at the port that were out of work and things of that nature," says Schlossberg.
Now, a year later, its business as usual, but there are still uncertainties for the future once the state begins building a new bridge.
“We're hoping that it won’t and that if there is any sort of interruption that it would be brief and minor. Obviously, its a long timeline to rebuild the bridge and an extensive amount of work, so I’m sure there will be some impacts here and there but certainly nothing to the extent of what we saw before, which was a 3 month shut down of the harbor," he says.
Although there are still those unknowns, Schlossberg says boating is back in Baltimore and he is looking forward to taking full advantage of this year’s boating season.
