New Dock Installed at Tallman Rowing Center

By Justin Lutes, January 7, 2021

The crew teams' gift and endowment funds covered the cost of the replacement and installation.

The new dock was built with reused materials from a trio of old docks, which were dismantled manually by the crew teams' coaching staffs with assistance from IC's office of facilities.

(Photo courtesy of Becky Robinson)

When the rowing seasons get back underway, the Ithaca College crew and sculling teams will officially step foot on a brand-new dock at the Robert B. Tallman Rowing Center. The state-of-the-art structure was installed over the fall months and completed this past December. The crew gift and endowment funds provided the money to replace the old docks and install the new ones.

The process for dismantling the old docks began in late August as the coaching staff of Dan Robinson ’79, Becky Robinson ’88, Beth Greene ’00 and graduate assistant Luke LaPointe ’11, along with Ward Romer, met each Thursday on the waterfront.

“This project exemplifies the ultimate in teamwork, Bomber grit and the power of endowment and donor support. Ward, Becky and Dan’s vision for the program for excellence on the water, alumni engagement with a strong sense of family created the foundation for accomplishing a project such as this.”

Susan Bassett '79, associate vice president and director of intercollegiate athletics and recreational sports

Those five performed the manual work of dismantling the three old wooden docks; the 120-foot main shell dock, the 60-foot secondary dock, and the segmented coaches/launch dock. Useable lumber and floatation bins from the dismantling were saved to re-construct a new coaches/launch dock.

“This project exemplifies the ultimate in teamwork, Bomber grit and the power of endowment and donor support," said Susan Bassett '79 associate vice president and director of intercollegiate athletics and recreational sports. “Ward, Becky and Dan’s vision for the program for excellence on the water, alumni engagement with a strong sense of family created the foundation for accomplishing a project such as this. I feel enormous gratitude for their efforts to put the muscle behind the idea to achieve this project. Thank you to our facilities team, vice president for finance and administration, Bill Guerrero, vice president for student affairs and campus life Rosanna Ferro and associate vice president of facilities Tim Carey for their support.”

This time-lapse video shows the installation of the new dock.

“Ward deserves all the credit for the planning, and he put in extra hours working on his own,” said Dan Robinson. “Dismantling the old docks without ending up in the drink, was not as easy as it sounds. The 60-foot dock included several 30-foot long, 10-inch by 10-inch beams that were difficult to handle. Ernie McClatchie and his staff helped with some heavy lifting. Additionally, they provided the dumpster service and we filled seven loads.”

As for re-building, Romer used designs from the old dock to plan the new coaches dock and rebuilt it with the saved materials. The new coaches dock was completed on December 3. The two long shell docks which were installed on December 7 and 8 and the project was completed on December 11.