The City Commission got on board Tuesday with plans for a facility that would link the city to an existing water taxi service to the south.

Plans approved Tuesday show the city is applying for nearly $200,000 in grants from state and local sources to build a water taxi station capable of accommodating four or five water taxis at the intersection of Northeast Second Street and Riverside Drive.

“I think our redevelopment activities on the beach will be very accessible from this stop,” said Commissioner Barry Dockswell, who represents the city’s beachside. “Long term we would be like to be interconnected to [water taxis] from the top of the county down to Hollywood.”

Adding a water taxi is part a multi-pronged effort in the coming years that will mean the eastern edge of Pompano Beach has more places to shop, park, stroll and get to other oceanfront locales.

A beachside parking garage is being built. Two restaurants have signed onto oceanfront locations. And permitting is underway to redo the city’s pier, which has not been completely open since Hurricane Wilma hit in 2005.

Horacio Danovich, city engineer, said that if all goes as planned, everything will be in place by the Fourth of July 2016, or soon thereafter.

“What they have to do is build a sea wall that allows a taxi to pull up perpendicularly to the shore where there are just rocks now,” he said, estimating that the facility will take just four months to build. The first station will be a model for others the city hopes to build, he said.

Janet Zimmerman, assistant executive director of the Florida Inland Navigation District, called it a “great project.” Pompano Beach’s request for $98,000 is one of 80 projects the district will be considering at the end of the month. The city has also requested a $98,000 grant from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

“If not funded this year, it has a great chance next year,” she said.

Pompano Beach leaders envision the service providing a northern leg that would hitch up with the 19-stop Water Taxi Service of Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood. Since 1997, the taxi loop has made a watery path among pubs and museums, from the New River to the cruise port area and from the GalleryOne DoubleTree Hotel in Fort Lauderdale to the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa Hollywood.

In Deerfield Beach, the Admiral Water Taxi Service is not quite ready to call itself a full-fledged taxi service to the extent of linking up to others. This season will be the third year that Capt. Dane Mark has been leaving from the Two Georges Restaurant at The Cove and bringing people around the sights to the north.

“It’s more of sightseeing work,” he said, explaining that he also will pick up condo groups and bring them back after lunch. “I’m a one-man operation. A water taxi service needs a lot of boats.”

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