What's Next for the Commercial Street Docks?

Every week, we set out to answer a question submitted by one of our readers as part of our You Ask...Patch Answers column.

On Monday, we received an email from a local resident who was hoping we might be able to provide an update regarding the Harbors and Waters Board's plan to replace the docks off of Commercial Street.

They asked: I saw they were going to be replacing the Commercial Street docks while walking my dog this morning. Any idea when that is going to happen? Who is going to be paying for it?

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According to Marblehead Harbormaster Webb Russell, the replacement of the 28-year-old docks off of Commercial Street is expected to be a relatively quick process and should be wrapped up by mid-April.

Russell said he recently touched base with the Pennsylvania-based company that was awarded the bid to build the docks and the plan is to have them trucked in by the end of March and in the water by April 13.

"These are town-owned public access docks and we always said we'd replace them when they started to fail and right now they're definitely starting to fail," Russell said.

The new docks will be paid for using mooring fees, Russell said.

If you have a question for us, no matter how strange, send it in and we will try to track down an answer for you.