Dock, Boat Lift and Seawall Contractor Serving St. Petersburg, Florida

St. Petersburg is a peninsular city with water on three sides: Tampa Bay to the east, Boca Ciega Bay and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway to the west, and Old Tampa Bay to the north. The city puts its shoreline at 244 miles. Anderson Dock & Lift Co. serves St. Petersburg from its Bradenton base, north across the Sunshine Skyway. The company is veteran owned and operated. Owner Pete Anderson holds Florida certified specialty contractor license SCC131152520, and is a combat veteran with 24 years in the Army and Air Force.

Conditions change from one side of the peninsula to the other, and from one canal to the next. A dock on open Tampa Bay off Bahama Shores faces east into miles of fetch with nothing to break it. A dock at the head of a Shore Acres canal sits in protected water that silts in and goes thin at low tide. We set piling depth, deck height and lift capacity for the specific stretch of water in front of the property, and we say so when a shorter dock is the right answer.

The Water in St. Petersburg

The city fronts three separate systems. Tampa Bay, the largest open water estuary in Florida at close to 400 square miles, runs the whole east side, from Weedon Island south past the downtown waterfront to Pinellas Point. Boca Ciega Bay covers the west side inside the barrier islands and carries the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, a federal channel with a project depth of 9 feet and a width of 100 feet. That bay was the first aquatic preserve the Florida Legislature designated, in 1969, after the finger fill dredging of the 1950s. Between the two, a chain of named bayous cuts into the city: Coffee Pot Bayou and Smacks Bayou at Snell Isle, Placido Bayou and Bayou Grande in the northeast, Riviera Bay behind Weedon Island, Big Bayou and Little Bayou around Coquina Key. The NOAA gauge at St. Petersburg on Tampa Bay records a mean tide range of 1.59 feet and a great diurnal range of 2.26 feet.

Waterfront areas we cover: Snell Isle, Shore Acres, Venetian Isles, Riviera Bay, Placido Bayou, Historic Old Northeast, Coquina Key, Bahama Shores, Pinellas Point, Broadwater, Bayway Isles, Maximo Moorings, Yacht Club Estates and Causeway Isles on Boca Ciega Bay.

Docks and Piers for Open Bay Frontage and Dredged Canals

An east facing dock on Tampa Bay has open water in front of it and takes wind driven chop and boat wake that a canal dock never sees. Piling depth and bracing matter more there than deck square footage. In the dredged canals of Shore Acres, Venetian Isles and Coquina Key the problem reverses: protected water, but canal ends that silt in, and side lot lines close enough that layout becomes the constraint. Because the mean tide range at the St. Petersburg gauge is 1.59 feet, deck elevation has very little margin. We set it against mean high water and against the freeboard of the boat you actually run. Decking options include Trex, TimberTech AZEK, WearDeck and Deckorators.

Boat Lifts for Thin Canal Ends, Bayou Slips and Open Bay Docks

Lift selection in St. Petersburg comes down to depth at low water and what the boat draws. Canal ends and the upper bayous go thin at a strong low, and because the normal range is under two feet, a sustained north wind can pull water out of Tampa Bay and put a hull on the bottom when the tide table said it would float. We set bunks and cradles with that in mind. Air draft is the other limit, and whichever bridge sits between the dock and open water sets it. The Snell Isle Boulevard NE bridge over Coffee Pot Bayou is a low fixed span. Boats headed north into Old Tampa Bay pass under the Gandy Bridge, which carries 43 feet of vertical clearance. On the Boca Ciega Bay side, the Pinellas Bayway Structure E bridge on SR 679 was rebuilt as a fixed span with 65 feet of clearance over the Intracoastal Waterway. We install and service jet ski, pontoon, sailboat and large yacht lifts from Sea Mount, Hurricane and Deco, and we inspect and repair lifts we did not install.

Seawalls, Tiebacks and Retaining Walls on a Dredged Shoreline

Much of the canal shoreline in St. Petersburg is mid century fill held in place by seawall, and a lot of that wall is at or past the end of its service life. The failure pattern is usually not the panel face. It is the cap cracking, the tiebacks letting go, and soil washing out through the joints until a void opens under the yard. Hurricane Helene pushed the St. Petersburg gauge to 6.31 feet above mean higher high water in September 2024, past the 3.97 feet set by Hurricane Elena in 1985 and the highest reading in a record that starts in 1947. Hurricane Idalia had already flooded more than 1,200 homes in Shore Acres in August 2023, and Hurricane Milton came ashore near Siesta Key that October. Water that far over a wall saturates the backfill and pulls soil back out through the joints as it drains. We build new seawalls, repair and re-tie existing ones, install and repair retaining walls, and inspect walls before a sale or after a storm.

Inspections, Piling Wraps and Maintenance

Because the mean tide range here is about a foot and a half, the splash zone on a piling is a narrow band that stays wet nearly all the time. That band is where wood and steel give out first, and it is the reason piling wraps earn their place on St. Petersburg structures. Three named storms in two seasons also put loads on local docks, lifts and walls that many were never designed for. We inspect docks, piers, lifts, seawalls and retaining walls, and we service and repair lifts. A cracked cap, a slipping tieback or a corroded lift cable costs less to fix at the inspection than after it fails.

Permits in St. Petersburg

Who issues them: the Pinellas County Water and Navigation Control Authority, administered through the Water and Navigation section of the county Public Works Department, which permits docks, seawalls, riprap, tie poles and all dredging and filling in county waters, inside municipal limits as well as unincorporated areas. The City of St. Petersburg Construction Services and Permitting Division, at the Municipal Services Center, One 4th Street North, issues the city building permit. Work over state-owned submerged lands also goes to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection Southwest District for the environmental resource permit and the submerged lands authorization, with the US Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District, reviewing the federal side.

A city address in St. Petersburg does not mean a single permit. Pinellas County Code Chapter 58, Article XV bars constructing a dock or other obstruction to navigation in county waters without a county permit, and that holds inside the city limits, so a City of St. Petersburg building permit alone is not enough. Boca Ciega Bay carries the added layer of aquatic preserve status, and seagrass in the shallows on both sides of the peninsula can change where a dock is allowed to go and how it has to be built. Which agencies apply, and in what order, gets settled before the design is final.

What We Build and Repair

Frequently Asked Questions

Anderson Dock & Lift is based in Bradenton and works across Florida’s Gulf Coast. See every town we cover, or call (941) 720-6733 for a free estimate within 24 business hours.