7 minute read
Business Profile: Commencement Bay Marine Services
Navigating together
Heritage Bank helps propel Commencement Bay Marine Services, providing downwind benefits for youth marine programs.
The coronavirus pandemic—a boon to home remodelers improving houses to which people were largely confined for work and school—also motivated many boat owners to improve their vessels or get into boating as they sought safe family activities. That was wind in the sails for Commencement Bay Marine Services, which offers boat repair, maintenance, parts, cleaning, vessel haul-out and launch assistance and more at its Thea Foss Waterway location in Tacoma. It was able to increase its maintenance capacity with timely help from Heritage Bank. In turn, that has helped Tacoma’s nonprofit Youth Marine Foundation, which owns Commencement Bay Marine Services and adjacent Tacoma Fuel Dock. Revenue from those businesses helps support the foundation and its youth marine programs. The fuel dock also provides youth employment opportunities. The foundation, operating its programs out of the Tacoma Youth Marine Center that neighbors Commencement Bay Marine Services, introduces the Puget Sound waterways to Pierce County youth who might not otherwise experience boating, according to Monique Valenzuela, CEO of Commencement Bay Marine Services and executive director of the foundation.
Benefits include exposure to maritime occupations and sciences, leadership skills, safe boating and human relationships with the environment. The Tacoma Youth Marine Center has four large training vessels on which youth can experience the water, including a 90-foot sailboat and 78-foot motor vessel that was originally built for the U.S. Coast Guard. It also has a fleet of more than 35 smaller vessels, including kayaks, inflatable boats and small sailboats. The foundation’s biggest partner is the Sea Scouts, a program of the Boy Scouts of America, which makes its local base at the Tacoma Youth Marine Center and provides the bulk of the center’s programming, Valenzuela said. The Sea Scouts own the two large vessels and serve as training platforms for the Sea Scouts’ programs for young men and women 13 to 20, Valenzuela said. “While they’re learning how to run the ship, navigate the ship, run the sails…they think it’s a lot of fun, but in reality, running a commercial vessel, it’s a lot of character development and leadership and communication growth,” she said. “We start with 13-year-olds who can’t even drive their grandma’s car…but they get to drive a boat in the middle of Commencement Bay.” Sea Scouts have gone on to become marine professionals, elected officials and job creators, Valenzuela said. The foundation provides moorage for the Sea Scouts’ vessels and leases the ships for its own programs at the Tacoma Youth Marine Center. The foundation leases the space for the center, and maintenance and fuel businesses from the Port of Tacoma.
Photo by David Putnam, courtesy of Youth Marine Foundation
Foundation programs include hosting highschool students for marine science learning in the center’s classroom and on the 90- and 78foot vessels that serve as “floating classrooms” to expose students to the Puget Sound ecosystem, where they can take water samples and gain other experiences, Valenzuela said. “It’s very real-time, hands-on learning,” she said. “Once a month they put their life jackets on, they’re getting on a boat and now Commencement Bay is their classroom. Because of the strength of the foundation and the businesses, we are training future marine scientists, and we’re building an empathy (for the Sound environment) that may not otherwise be there if you haven’t been on the water.” The programs open the water to everyone, regardless of whether they come from a boating family, she said. Additionally, the foundation is working with the Tacoma School District this year to introduce middle-schoolers to the water in a new program called Operation Middle School Diversity. “I want every middle-schooler to come to the water they look at every day and experience it,” Valenzuela said.
Heritage reaches out in the storm
As the pandemic was hitting last year, businesses were shutting down, and Commencement Bay Marine Services was in a state of limbo, a Heritage Bank executive reached out to the business even though Heritage wasn’t its bank at the time, said Valenzuela, who was familiar with Heritage through volunteering with its executives on various community boards or causes. “Without skipping a beat, we had someone from Heritage that I’ve worked with before, basically saying, ‘Hey guys, I love your mission. Just to let you know, this is what I’m doing for other customers and other businesses,’” Valenzuela said. “And we just kind of said, ‘You know what, that’s the kind of service we need to continue our mission as a nonprofit.’” The bank’s effort to reach out to a noncustomer it cared about was enough to get Commencement Bay Marine Services to move its banking business within about a month’s time.
“The thing I love about Heritage Bank is that they are committed to their community whether you are their customer or not,” she said. “They have their finger on the pulse; they’re always giving.” Heritage, through one round of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), helped stabilize the business during the critical early stages of the pandemic,
then arranged a second PPP round as business began to pick up, allowing Commencement Bay Marine Services to add staff and purchase expensive inventory like engines and other parts that were needed as people spent money improving their watercrafts, Valenzuela said. “With Heritage Bank’s help, we were able to double our mechanic staff for the first time,” she said. “We had more business than we could handle, but due to the collaboration of Heritage Bank and their support, and helping us get our PPP loan, we were actually able to secure the loan for what it was intended—add staff and give people more hours.” That added staff included one young man who, while in high school last year, became the first mechanic intern at the business. The business’s head mechanic mentored the youth one period each day and he became a full-time mechanic with the business, beginning a career he had long desired. “If we didn’t have the support of Heritage Bank and we couldn’t keep our mechanics full time, we may not have had that infrastructure to change the life of this young man,” Valenzuela said. “He’s now full-time employed with us as a mechanic, at 19, and has full medical (and) dental benefits. That’s nothing to shake a stick at.” Heritage Bank does good directly, she said, “but even indirectly, that’s the effect they’re having on our community. By supporting small businesses like ours, they’ve helped launch this kid into a career of upward mobility.”
And it’s a win for Commencement Bay Marine Services, which—in its 14th year in business, the last three under the direction of Valenzuela—is well-positioned to continue serving boaters, supporting its employees and exposing youth to maritime science and industry. Over the summer, the Tacoma Youth Marine Center also diversified with its first bilingual youth training program on the 78-foot ship, working with Seattle’s El Centro de la Raza (The Center for People of All Races). “That reach was amazing and one that may not have been possible if we had to close our doors to Commencement Bay Marine Services, which helps fund such programs,” Valenzuela said. “So having our healthy businesses, having Heritage Bank invest in us, helps us realize these once-ina-lifetime opportunities. As a Latina myself, the maritime industry was not one that I was aware of, nor knew of, yet was able to connect with students who spoke English as a second language. I’m able to speak in both English and Spanish with them to make it really, really successful.” Those kinds of experiences embody the foundation’s mission, and Heritage Bank’s support for the business ensures youth will continue to be inspired and learn for years to come, she said. Asked what insight she might have on the benefits of working with Heritage, Valenzuela said she likes that she can call and get someone live to help her with banking issues anytime, and that the bank lets her run the business. “Especially for other small-business owners, you are in the business at which you are an expert,” she said. “Let Heritage be the banking experts so that you have comfort you can go about your day knowing they’re taking care of you.”
Photo courtesy of Youth Marine Foundation
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