Adding 38 Covered Slips Without Shutting the Marina Down

Keystone Harbor sits on Lake Keystone in Mannford, Oklahoma, a Corps of Engineers reservoir about twenty minutes west of Tulsa, and it was open and running the whole time we worked. We added 38 covered slips across two builds at once: a brand-new freestanding dock and a permanent extension onto an existing one. We finished in spring 2023.

Making Room Before Adding

On this particular project there wasn’t room in the existing marina footprint to add the slips that they wanted. We had to add a walkway to the existing marina and then reposition the existing docks to make the marina navigation easier for boaters and maintain fairway requirements mandated by the Army Corps of Engineers.

We added 234 ft of walkway to the east end of the marina, added 30 slips in the form of a new G dock, added eight slips to the end of the existing B dock, and then relocated the existing H dock from the end of the fuel pier to the end of our new eastbound walkway.

Two Docks, Two Different Methods

G Dock is new and freestanding, with its own anchoring, set into the space the reconfiguration opened up. It carries 30 covered slips at 12′ × 28′, sized for the runabouts, pontoons, and wake boats you see on Lake Keystone.

B Dock grew instead of starting over. We hard-connected 8 covered slips onto the end of the existing B Dock as a rigid, permanent extension, so the old and new run as one continuous dock.

Built for a Lake That Swings 30 Feet

Every slip on both docks is framed in hot-dipped galvanized steel with concrete decking. The covers are a raised-ridge, cupola-style roof, the open ridge lets hot air trapped under the cover rise and escape, provides wind-load relief, and also allows smoke relief in the event of a fire.

Anchoring on Lake Keystone has to handle the reservoir’s full range. The Corps of Engineers runs Lake Keystone with a conservation pool around 723 feet and a flood pool that climbs to 754, about a 30-foot swing. Here we used a winch-and-cable system: cables run from each dock to lake anchors, and the marina can take in or pay out cable as levels change to keep every dock sitting where it should.

Keystone Lake is especially hard on galvanized anchor cables, so all of the new anchorage on this dock used 5/8″ stainless steel cable.

See more of our completed marina projects.

What 38 Slips Means Here

Thirty-eight covered slips in one build is a big jump in a marina’s portfolio. Covered space at Keystone rents at a premium and tends to stay full, so the operator picked up real earning capacity, not just more dock.

We design, build, and maintain each system around the lake it sits on, which at Keystone meant clearing space in a live marina and building two dock types to fit one expansion.

Ready to talk about a dock addition or marina expansion? Contact us or call (918) 715-4102.