Stephen Lehn and Jacob Boan grew up boating in Texas and Kansas but never thought their love for water would lead them to start a company that acquires marinas across the U.S.
“I grew up around marinas but didn’t know there could be a job behind them,” said Lehn, who turned that hobby into an investment business called TopSide Marinas. “I saw them as just a place to park your boat. Now I have to pinch myself.”
The two founders met after Lehn recruited Boan to Suntex Marina Investors, another Dallas company with a network of saltwater and freshwater marinas in the U.S.
The friends and partners started a business plan for TopSide Marinas in late 2018 before officially launching in January 2020 with backing from Dallas’ Miramar Equity Partners and billionaire Bob Rowling’s TRT Holdings, which owns Omni Hotels & Resorts.
TopSide, which works out of a co-working space at The Star, made its first two acquisitions this year, choosing locations popular with North Texans.
“We searched the whole country and ended up in our own backyard,” Lehn said.
The first was Beavers Bend Marina on Broken Bow Lake in Oklahoma, a popular vacation destination for residents in North Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. It served more than 200,000 visitors this summer.
Before the season started, TopSide made a number of improvements to the marina, including 20 new wet slips for a total of 350 wet slips. It also purchased new rental boats, bringing its fleet to 60.
Florida-based marina sales broker Simply Marinas brokered the deal that took about nine months from when TopSide first heard about it.
In August, TopSide acquired its second marina, Galveston Yacht Basin, four months after approaching former owners Greg Pappas and Rocky Sullivan, managing members of Galveston’s GYB Investors LLC. Located minutes from the Gulf of Mexico, the marina will service the 7.2 million tourists who visit Galveston Island each year. It has 500 wet slips, 260 dry stack racks, fishing boat charters, fuel and a retail and bait store.
Both marinas were already profitable, meaning TopSide’s job is to continue making enhancements and improvements to the properties to keep visitors happy.
The company has “aggressive plans” for future acquisitions nationwide in the next six to 18 months. It hopes to acquire two to four or more in the next year, Lehn said.
“There’s no ceiling to how large our platform can get,” he said.
Finder’s Reward program
To accelerate its growth, TopSide is offering a $75,000 finder’s fee to those who connect them with a marina they end up buying, whether it be on a lake, river or coast. This type of reward program isn’t typical in the industry, but TopSide wants to reward those who help connect them with like-minded families in the industry, Lehn said.
So far, many marinas have been submitted and TopSide is pursuing several of them, Lehn said.
The first two acquisitions weren’t part of the Finders Reward program as the first was facilitated by a brokerage firm and the second was found by Lehn and Boan.
“We look at marinas every week all over the country from the Southwest to the Great Lakes to the Atlantic coast lakes,” he said.
The company was started shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, which devastated many businesses but ended up boosting outdoor activities like boating. The National Marine Manufacturers Association reported that new boat sales increased last year by an estimated 12% to more than 310,000, reaching levels not seen since before the Great Recession in 2008.
“It’s up to us to make sure we nurture those boaters and help that continue,” Lehn said.
