Houseboat plans in early stages for Port City Marina

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WILMINGTON, NC (WECT) - Forget living by the water. How about living right on it?

According to Port City Marina owner Chuck Schoninger, the marina is in the early stages of designing houseboats that would sit closer to the Convention Center to maintain the feel of the marina.

"It seemed like when we were walking the docks, people just love being up here and love being in the marina and they want to kind of live here on their boat," Schoninger said. "We just came up with the idea of maybe making a boat that's a little more of a residential vessel than a go take it out in the ocean type vessel."

The houseboats would be built locally, Schoninger said. The marina is working with CJMW Architecture to help design the homes.

According to Schoninger, the local houseboat plans are similar to those at marinas in Seattle

"I feel like downtown (Wilmington) is trying to develop to become something," Schoninger said. "Different flavors of how things go together are important, so this is some type of diversity that could be a very attractive model that we could see as downtown could grow."

Schoninger said he hopes the first three houseboats will be under construction in the next week or two. Depending on how the marketplace accepts the houseboats, more might be built.

As far as weather concerns and keeping residents safe in case a hurricane hits, Schoninger said the Port City Marina is a hurricane protected marina, a hurricane hole. He said the houseboats can be taken out of the water, however, if the elements become too dangerous.