| In
the News > Lobstermen, land trust
help preserve town's working waterfront
Maine
Today
December 4, 2003
PORTLAND,
Maine — Two York lobstermen have teamed
up with a local land trust to buy a fishing dock
and preserve it as working waterfront, a deal
hailed as a potential model for saving other scenic,
working harbors along the Maine coast.
The
$710,000 deal to purchase Sewall´s Bridge
dock on the south side of the York River and return
it to commercial use will help save a bit of York
Harbor´s fast-disappearing working waterfront.
The
dock, used by commercial fishermen for years,
previously had been bought by a private homeowner
who rented space to pleasure boaters and had plans
to develop a home on the site.
The
harbor has already lost three docks in the past
two decades to development pressure, including
one that was recently sold for more than $1 million,
converted into a home and then resold for $2.3
million.
York´s
shrinking commercial waterfront mirrors what´s
happening all along the coast as developers of
high-priced homes buy up properties once used
to unload fish and lobsters.
"In
York Harbor here, we´ve lost really all
but one of our commercial piers, and that´s
the one I´m currently renting," said
Mark Sewall, one of the lobstermen who bought
the Sewall´s Bridge dock. "All the
lobster pounds and all that are gone."
Under
the terms of the agreement, Sewall and Jeff Donnell
put up $300,000 to help meet the $710,000 sale
price of the rebuilt, 2,290-square-foot dock and
about a sixth of an acre of land. The York Land
Trust raised another $410,000 to buy the conservation
easement that will protect it from development.
The
fishermen accepted a value for the easement that
was less than fair market value, said Doreen MacGillis,
executive director of the York Land Trust.
The
Sewall´s Bridge deal is believed to be the
first time a land trust has played a role in protecting
working waterfront.
"This
is definitely breaking new ground, this model
of a local land trust partnering with the fishing
community to share the rising cost of waterfront
property," said Elizabeth Sheehan, fisheries
project director for Coastal Enterprises Inc.,
a nonprofit community development corporation
in Wiscasset.
Sheehan
co-authored a study last year that documented
the pressures commercial fishermen are feeling
from a growing coastal population, rising taxes
and the real estate boom. The study found that
only 25 miles of working waterfront remain in
the 7,000 miles of tidal coastline between Kittery
and Eastport.
The
Sewall´s Bridge project will be a small
step in reversing that trend.
"It´s
adding 85 more feet to Maine´s 25 miles
of working waterfront," Sheehan said.
Article
Copyright © 2004 Maine Today & The Associated
Press.
|
