Editor's Note: The following article was originally published in The
Clinton County News on July 13.
After over a decade of planning, meetings, surveying and at times,
throwing their hands up in the air and nearly giving up on the
project, Tony Sloan and Tom Allen were all smiles last week when they
met with officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to sign the
lease agreement for the Marina at Rowena.
Sloan and Allen are the managing partners for the new marina they
will be building on Lake Cumberland that will be known as Marina at
Rowena and will be located at what is referred to as Rowena Landing
South.
Although the bulk of the new facility will be physically located in
Russell County, much of the leased area as well as the adjoining land
that will be developed privately, is in Clinton County and is only
accessible by road through Clinton County.
The new marina will be situated near the end of Highway 558 just
across the Clinton County and Russell County boundary.
Sloan has long been a fixture in the local marina business
community, at one time being a co-owner and operator of Grider Hill
Dock, a marina built by his father in the 1950s and operated by the
Sloan family until it was sold several years ago.
In addition, Sloan is a co-owner of another Lake Cumberland marina,
Conley Bottom.
He and Allen are partners in a Dale Hollow Lake marina in
neighboring Pickett County, Tennessee, Sunset Marina.
The Rowena site lease consists of just over 400 acres and Sloan
noted Monday that there are 2,000 more acres that are contiguous to
the lease site that can be developed for public use and enjoyment.
Sloan said that the Lake Cumberland and Dale Hollow market during
the summer tourism months was mainly people from Ohio, Indiana,
Virginia and even Michigan.
With access to the marina available by land only by driving through
Clinton County, both Sloan and Allen said the benefit to the Clinton
County economy would be extremely substantial.
The Marina at Rowena will become the ninth marina to operate
commercially on Lake Cumberland.
Sloan and Allen told the Clinton County News that a large parking
lot and launch ramp will be the first changes the local public will
see being built.
The launch ramp will be located across the cove from where 558
currently runs into Lake Cumberland and a large parking lot will be
built in the area where the cove of water is currently formed.
Sloan said that plans are to use rock from bluffs and berms adjacent
to the location to build up the elevation where the parking lot and
ramp are planned.
Allen said that some 100,000 cubic yards of rock from the area will
be blasted and moved during the first part of the construction process.
Sloan told the Clinton County News that his dream for the Marina at
Rowena was a gamble on the future prosperity of the nation and he
believed that with an increasing population and an improving economy,
the facility would come to be one of the busiest and most successful
ventures on Lake Cumberland.
The location of the planned marina alone – just upstream from and
practically in sight of Wolf Creek Dam and adjacent to one of the
largest openings in the lake, would be a natural draw to boaters
recreating on the lake.
Allen also pointed out that the Rowena location would be first
service location that boaters would see when they were using the new
massive launching and parking facility that was built adjacent to
Wolf Creek Dam during the rehabilitation work completed there a few
years ago.
Sloan further said that the project seemed to be stalled on more
than one occasion in the past decade but he and Allen continued
working on getting the lease approved.
While he was quick to give credit to all of the Kentucky
congressional delegation at every level, as well as leaders from the
local government level for getting and staying behind the plans, he
was also quick to heap praise on his partner for his perseverance and
persistence in not giving up on the dream.
Allen said that during the application process, there were hurdles
that had to be dealt with and often the resolution to those hurdles
would even create new hurdles that had to be resolved.
"A lot of people lost faith in the process but we just kept chipping
away and chipping away," Allen said Monday morning while at the site
where the parking lot will soon be under construction.
"Tommy deserves the credit for doing all of the ‘chipping'" Sloan
said. "Every time we would run into a problem or a question or a
wall, Tommy would just find the answer and work it out and keep it
alive."
The decade long review process included cultural, historical,
environmental, and archaeological reviews as well as multiple market
and feasibility studies.
Sloan said he plans to build an ultra-modern facility that will
attract boaters from this entire region of the nation.
"This is going to be the epicenter of Lake Cumberland," Sloan said.
Already a crew of about a dozen men are hard at work preparing and
building portions of the steel and wooden sections that will be
linked together to form a wide walkway that will lead from the launch
ramp to the planned main dock structure .
hat main dock facility will be situated at the end of the cove that
forms the Rowena Landing area.
From that location where the dock building will be situated, a view
to the west will allow patrons to see downstream for about four miles
to the high cliffs just south of Wolf Creek Dam.
To the east, a view of Lake Cumberland upstream allows about eight
miles of uninterrupted sight of the lake's surface waters.
The lease agreement calls for the blasting and rock moving that will
form the parking lot and launch area to be the first completed
portion of construction, and will be followed by the construction and
placement of the walkway itself.
Many of the 22 sections of 80 foot long walkway are being
constructed now in a location in Clinton County near Hwy. 558 just
north of where the new marina will be built.
Along that walkway that will lead to the main dock building will be
some 121 moorage slips for boats, including more than 50 open air
houseboat slips on the west side and on the east side, covered slips
for smaller vessels such as cruisers, pontoons and recreational boats
of various sizes.
Sloan also explained that the overhead covering would extend out
over the walkway that leads to the building, giving customers the
protection from inclement weather conditions as they make their way
to the dock building.
According to the plan, that main dock building will eventually be
equipped with a marina store, restrooms, fuel dock, pump out
facilities, and boat rental operations.
Space will also be allocated for a café in the future.
Allen said that he would hope to see an outdoor eating area included
in those café plans that would allow customers to enjoy a meal or
snack in the open air next to the lake, while protected by a roof and
a short wall surrounding the area.
The pair even talked about the possibility of that outdoor eating
area being equipped with an air conditioning system that would keep
patrons comfortable despite temperatures that are normally associated
with southern Kentucky during the summer tourism season.
They estimated that construction costs to get the project past the
initial phase and having the ramp, parking lot, walkway and dock
building completed, could cost more than $7 million.
The idea of a marina being located at the Rowena location isn't
something new that Sloan and Allen dreamed up, but was one of the
mentioned locations for a commercial marina in the Corps of Engineers
Lake Cumberland Master Plan released in 1949.
"This is the only site on the lake that was mentioned in the Master
Plan, that has never had a lease granted," Sloan said.
The pair of businessmen first began working on the plan to see a
commercial marina located at Rowena following the 2006 lowering of
Lake Cumberland brought on by the repair and rehabilitation project
surrounding a leaking Wolf Creek Dam.
At the time, London Dock was unable to continue to operate at the
lower lake levels, and the owners of that marina were looking for an
alternative site to relocate where the water was deeper.
Sloan and Allen began helping the London Dock owner, Nancy Mitchell,
seek approval for the moving of that facility, but due to several
obstacles and conflicts between the various agencies involved, the
project was not approved.
With two years of research and planning already under their belts,
Sloan and Allen were encouraged by a host of public officials to
continue pursuit of developing the site for a new commercial marina.
After a 10-year review process that the pair said was lengthy and
expensive, last week's signing ceremony in the Nashville, Tennessee
office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finally brought that
portion of the venture to a close and opened the door for the start
of actual construction phases.
Lt. Col. Stephen Murphy, Nashville District commander, joined Sloan
and Allen, to sign the lease agreement at the district headquarters
in the Estes Kefauver Federal Building at Nashville, Tennessee.
"I really want to say thank you to the (Corps of Engineers) team.
There was a lot of effort, a lot of review, a lot of meetings to
reach this milestone," Murphy said. "Today's lease signing is very
good for the lake and everyone around the lake."
Eventually, the plan calls for the construction of a host of other
possible facilities that would serve the tourism trade visiting the
marina.
Among those plans include picnic areas, walking and biking trails,
sites for both seasonal and transient recreational vehicle parks and
even proposed lodging facilities that would offer overnight lodging
with a view of Lake Cumberland.
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