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Marco Island’s marina-less yacht club will present its dock designs to the city Planning Board Friday for the third time in as many months.

Marco Island Yacht Club Vice Chair Rudi Landwaard is hoping to finally win over the board members with the new design of the marina, which was characterized as excessively large by city staff and a majority of the board Sept. 7.

Whether the revisions will satisfy the board, there is no telling.

New plans have the docks moved back from the Chestnut Waterway by 20 feet, opening up the mouth of the channel that feeds into the Marco River even more than a previous revision.

The shift of the two docks necessitated a reduction in their size as well, with the longer of the docks, an L-shaped structure, now jutting out 345 feet into the river. The smaller, T-shaped dock would sit inside that one, on the bridge side of the shore.

The original design of the longer dock had it protruding 420 feet, before it was scaled back to 390 as it was presented at the previous meeting a month ago.

At the Sept. 7 meeting, Vincent Magee told Landwaard and fellow board members that the only thing holding him back from approving the design was its size.

“If you could bring this down just a little bit, I could get behind it,” Magee said.

He was following city staff recommendations that the proposal be rejected because its size, but staff offered no specific parameters for the plans to be reduced. Magee tried to offer his own suggestion of reducing the length by 30 to 40 feet.

“My concerns are really paramount to the entrance of the Chestnut Waterway,” City Planner Bryan Milk said at that meeting. “I think it’s going to have an effect on small vessels in (the opening) of the channel.”

Some board members expressed concern that staff was making recommendations without any science to back them up.

“All of these issues and concerns, I think they’re overblown myself,” said boardmember Marv Needles. “It’s going against something that’s beneficial to the community.”

Board Chair James Riviere agreed, calling staff concerns “supersized,” but leveling the same claim at the scale of the yacht club’s designs. As with the 3-2 majority of the board, he voted against approval.

Board members David Caruso and Bill Patterson were absent from the meeting.

Members of the Planning Board were invited out to the Yacht Club last week to see firsthand where the marina would extend into the river. Landwaard said the club set markers in the water at the points where the two structures would end to give people a sense of the docks’ scale.

In scaling designs back, the yacht club and engineering firm Turrell & Associates have had to cut one of the 40 boat slips out of the plans, and reduce the size of some slips to accommodate 55-foot boats rather than 60-foot boats.

“Basically, with 39 (slips) we can hopefully in about 10 years break even,” Landwaard said of the new plans.

Under the original design, he said the Yacht Club expected to recoup costs of building the marina in just seven years.

Landwaard and club Chair Rich Michaels both told the board Sept. 7 that the docks are necessary to the long-term viability of the club. Currently, it owns just eight of the slips located at the Marco Island Marina Association, just behind the yacht club building. The marina association is a joint partner in the yacht club’s plan.

“The yacht club makes money from dues and food and beverage sales coming in,” Michaels said. “It’s not-for-profit — we can’t look at other sources of revenue. We would have to raise dues or raise the price of food. As we look to the future, we see that we need this marina.”

Landwaard said the yacht club has already had inquiries from two island residents about renting two larger slips from the club, one 100-footer and one 60-footer.

Diagrams of the new design were not available before the meeting, but to view the previous plans, visit marconews.com.