The States Organization for Boating Access (SOBA) recently announced its juried selection of 2025 Outstanding Project Award winners as part of the organization’s national awards program. The City of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, and MSA Professional Services, Inc. (MSA) were together chosen to receive an Outstanding Project Award for the Lac La Belle Boat Launch Reconstruction project, one of three projects selected nationwide to receive recognition in 2025.

SOBA’s Outstanding Project Awards recognize boating facilities that demonstrate innovation, utility, quality, uniqueness, and cost-effectiveness. Projects are nominated from across the United States and winners chosen on the merits of sound engineering principles, innovative design, project complexity, safety, accessibility, and project resilience.

The former Lac La Belle Boat Launch facility faced several site challenges including organic soils, frequent flooding, traffic impediments, limited parking, and inadequate accessibility. MSA assisted the city and project stakeholders in transforming the site into a safe, ADA-accessible, resilient community amenity with improved site grading, expanded parking and multimodal access routes, new underground floodwater management system, bioretention basins, enhanced marina space, modern restroom and concessions building, upgraded to a two-lane boat launch, and innovative automated launch fee system.

The project received just over $1 million in Recreational Boating Facilities Grant from the Wisconsin DNR and re-opened for public use on May 2, 2025.

“MSA is honored to receive recognition for the Lac La Belle Boat Launch project and grateful to the City of Oconomowoc for entrusting us with its restoration,” remarked Mike Statz, PE, chief operating officer at the firm. “The project presented intensive site and environmental challenges as well as multiple opportunities to improve pedestrian, vehicular, and boater safety and accessibility. We’re proud to deliver a solution that meets the needs of the stakeholders and congratulate the City on this national distinction.”

This year’s SOBA award winners were formally recognized at the 2025 SOBA Education & Training Symposium awards banquet held August 27 in Providence, Rhode Island.