The 48-year-old Fisherman’s Wharf building, pictured on the Port Aransas waterfront on Tuesday, Feb. 26, is expected to be demolished and replaced with a new store that will bear the same name and continue running the Wharf Cat and Scat Cat vessels. The Jetty Boat will continue running under the ownership of Bobby Grumbles, Heffner Appling and Karen Sheppard. A restaurant will be built next-door. Staff photo by Dan Parker
A new Fisherman’s Wharf building and accompanying next-door restaurant are going to be built under new ownership on the Port Aransas waterfront.
It’s a big change for one of the town’s most well-known businesses, operating for nearly half a century at the same location.
The current Fisherman’s Wharf building will be torn down within the next few weeks, according to Brantley Gwin, president of PAFW Holdings, the LLC that is the new owner. The store’s fish cleaning house was torn down several weeks ago.
PAFW Holdings purchased Fisherman’s Wharf from Bobby Grumbles and Heffner Appling, both of Port Aransas. The sale closed in December.
Will Cocke, a principal and managing partner in PAFW Holdings, said he grew up taking fishing trips out of Fisherman’s Wharf.
“It is sad to me it is coming down, but the fact is, it is beyond its useful life,” Cocke said. “It no longer makes sense to put more money into it as a structure.”
The Jetty Boat returns to Fisherman’s Wharf on Tuesday, Feb. 26, after visiting the north jetty on San Jose Island. Staff photo by Dan Parker
Cocke and Gwin are Corpus
Christi-based developers whose most recent projects have included North Shore Place Apartments, a 224-unit complex in Portland.
Cocke and Gwin’s LLC purchased Fisherman’s Wharf business assets including the Wharf Cat and Scat Cat boats that long have operated there, taking many thousands of people fishing and sightseeing over the years.
The LLC is planning to make various improvements to the boats and install new fueling equipment for the vessels, Cocke said.
While the LLC bought the Fisherman’s Wharf business and the Wharf Cat and Scat Cat, the Jetty Boat wasn’t part of the purchase. Ownership of the Jetty Boat will continue with Karen Sheppard, Grum- bles and Appling, according to Grumbles.
The land also wasn’t part of the purchase. The LLC has executed a long-term lease with the land owner, the Ellis Family Trust, Cocke said.
In addition, the company is leasing the property that formerly held a structure that most recently housed the Pelican Club restaurant. The building, which was heavily damaged by Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, was demolished in December.
After demolition, a temporary building will be set up where Fisherman’s Wharf can continue operating until a permanent structure can be put in place, Cocke said.
The Scat Cat and Wharf Cat will run on limited schedules this summer, he said.
The new owners hope to begin construction this summer and have the store and restaurant open by late spring or early summer next year.
Cocke said he plans to give the store and restaurant structures a Port Aransas feel.
“The best way, in my opinion, to describe the spirit of this would be that we’ll construct something new, keeping in mind that we’re building in the direct center of Old Town Port Aransas and want it to fit as well as you can make anything brand-new fit,” he said. “We’re not building an ultra-modern building there at all. It will be lap siding, with decks and overhangs.”
Trey Clark of Port Aransas will be the general manager of the new Fisherman’s Wharf, Cocke said.
Grumbles said the Fisherman’s Wharf building was patched up well enough to operate after Hurricane Harvey. But, he said, to provide customers with a setting that would be competitive with other Port Aransas headboat businesses, he and Appling would have had to tear the building down and build a new one.
Grumbles said that wasn’t something they felt like doing at this point in their lives.
“We’re 65 years old, it was going to be like starting all over again,” he said.
When Cocke approached them, a sale “fell into place,” Grumbles said.
Fisherman’s Wharf opened at its current location at 900 Tarpon St. in 1971. (In earlier decades, another Fisherman’s Wharf existed on the waterfront, a few doors down from where it is today.)
The current incarnation was begun by Bill Sheppard and his son, Edward.
In 1968, the two were running two boats, the Janice and the Jetty Boat, out of what at the time was known as the Enco Marina, now the University of Texas Marine Science Institute boat basin.
After the Sheppards opened Fisherman’s Wharf, they brought in Dave Bethune, Sam Urrick and Bob Brookshire as partners.
The Wharf Cat came in 1972. The Scat Cat came two years later, replacing the Janice.
The two “cats” were custom built steel-hulled boats that were “the most advanced of their kind and were equipped with the most modern tackle of their time,” said an ad that Fisherman’s Wharf placed in the South Jetty’s centennial issue published in 2010.
Bill and Edward Sheppard eventually bought out their partners. Later, in 1993, Fisherman’s Wharf was purchased by Grumbles, Appling and Pat McNamara. They also bought the Wharf Cat and Scat Cat.
McNamara sold his share to Grumbles and Appling in 2005.
Loading Comments