Far from the resort hotels of Virginia Beach, Suffolk's new swim-up pool bar serves fruity, rum-spiked tiki cocktails.

Builders and restaurateurs Teresa and Brian Mullins have developed an $8 million restaurant, bar and housing project at the historic Bennett’s Creek Marina just off the Nansemond River.

“We had to raise the entire property and bulkhead it to get it out of the flood zone,” Teresa Mullins said. “That took quite a bit of time. We drove pilings 60 feet into the ground; there was a lot of engineering there.”

The venue was completed on April 28. All told, the project includes a 54-slip marina with cottages for overnight guests, a 100-seat outdoor tiki bar called the Blind Duck with a 12-seat swim-up pool bar, and Decoys Seafood Restaurant, which opened in March. Eventually, the site will also include 23 condos for residents age 55 and older.

Stretching back to the 1980s, the marina is a Suffolk landmark, home to a succession of dockside seafood restaurants. Decoys is continuing this tradition by serving lunchtime baskets and the requisite surf ’n’ turf dinner menu of fresh fish, jumbo lump crabcakes, grilled tuna and char-grilled sirloin.

Baskets start at $10 for clam strips; entrees run $16-$23.

Mullins calls Decoys a bit of a departure from their River Stone Chophouse and 12-year-old Suffolk restaurant Vintage Tavern, a landmark for farm-to-table Southern seasonal dining in Hampton Roads.

“It’s much more casual,” she said of Decoys. “We’ll have people coming in off their boats.”

The crabcakes and shrimp dishes have been the most popular at the seafood house, whose kitchen is spearheaded by former Vintage Tavern chef Kevin Hofnagle. The restaurant has secured a year-round contract for Carolina shrimp, so it’s not necessary to bring them in from elsewhere.

But Mullins says one of the signature dishes ties in to the restaurant’s namesake: her husband ’s love of duck hunting.

“We’re doing a pulled-duck barbecue nacho. Like pulled pork, it has a vinegar base.” The dish also comes with jack cheese, pineapple salsa and jalapenos.

But the most singular additions to the marina won’t come until April 28. That’s when the 100-seat outdoor bar, the Blind Duck, is scheduled to open.

Along with creekfront views from its 14,000-square-foot deck, the Blind Duck’s most prominent feature will be an oblong-shaped lounging pool allowing swimmers to wade or paddle to a marble bar dishing up fruity, rum-spiked tiki cocktails. The pool will be about 5½ feet at its deepest.

Mullins thinks this is the first time Suffolk has seen a swim-up pool bar.

“We’re pretty sure this is new territory,” she said. “Before we ever decided to do it, we wanted to make sure this was a region where there weren’t any.”

But the bar will be adult-swim only. While Decoy’s is family-friendly, the tiki bar will be 21 and over, and be open Thursdays to Sundays until September.

The cocktail menufeatures a lot of big-flavored, fruity rum drinks to go with a snack menu with small bites like wraps and nachos.

The bar and restaurant serve a healthy amount of boat-up tourists alongside locals picking up dinner, drinks or lunch baskets.

Accordingly, the marina’s private docks will also be home to four overnight cottages where boaters can stay after parking at the marina, with access to a hot tub.

The Mullinses used trees from the building site to build their bar and restaurant. Every piece of interior wood in the restaurant and bar comes from the property it’s built on.

“We brought a fella out with a portable sawmill, Paul Garrity,” Mullins said. “We used black walnut to make the bartop inside the restaurant, pecan trees for the hardwood floors in the bar area and staircase, and a rare tree called osage orange – we used that on the tiki bar. It’s about the hardest wood you can get. Cedar was used for the tiki bar ceiling. All the pine we milled into the trim. We like woodworking. We took advantage of as much as we could.”

For the couple, the Bennett’s Creek Marina project is the fulfillment of a long-held dream.

“We’ve loved this piece of property for over 20 years,” she said. “For over 20 years we’ve had our eye on it. But the timing wasn’t always right. When it came up again it was perfect.”