A popular waterfront bar and restaurant in Belfast is looking to complete a major renovation over the next year that would, in part, help protect it against coastal floods that have repeatedly affected it in recent years.
The owners of Three Tides, which is affiliated with the neighboring Marshall Wharf Brewing Co., are looking to tear down its current building at 2 Pinchey Ln. and reconstruct it on the same foundation.
The city’s planning board unanimously approved the proposal at a meeting Wednesday night, with no one commenting on it during a public hearing. It will now go to the city council for final approval.
If the project is approved, the owners of Three Tides, Daniel Waldron and Kathleen Dunckel, hope to start it in the spring and complete it by late next fall or early in the winter of 2026. However, its beer garden would remain open during construction, Waldron said.
The business is currently closed for renovations, according to its website.
In their application, the owners said the project would accomplish a few things, including tearing out rotted posts and beams at the ground level, replacing its framing to meet current building standards, incorporating pressure-treated lumber into the construction, and bringing the building’s ramps, stairs and handrails up to Americans with Disabilities Act standards.
“The building is just dated. We needed to put in more space for a kitchen, and updates, so we decided to just go the whole way and take the old building down and put up a new one,” said Waldron, who estimated the original structure was built in the 1870s.
Moreover, they aim to raise the building’s first floor by about 30 inches to meet new federal flooding standards.
“We have added a front porch, and one of the biggest changes that we’re asking for this time is we are raising the bar level floor to get it above the FEMA flood plane standard,” said architect Greg Tinder of Whitecap Builders.
“That, as many times as the building has flooded in the last three years, is something we felt like we needed to do,” he said. “This brings it down, as you’re walking down the harborwalk, it puts the building on par with its neighbors in terms of heights and entry and things like that.”
The project is an update of a proposal that the city had first approved in 2020, with about 168 square feet of additional space from that earlier plan. It now requires contract rezoning to go forward.
