This story first appeared in The Working Waterfront, published by the Island Institute.
Much like ancient Gaul, Winter Harbor on the Down East coast is divided into three parts, at least when approached from the water.
To the west lies Grindstone Neck, the site of many large, elegant summer homes and the Winter Harbor Yacht Club, which offers a hospitable welcome to visiting yachtsmen.
In the center, the narrow inner harbor provides mooring space for the town’s large and active lobster fleet. With the busy lobster co-op near its head and the large town dock—devoted almost entirely to fishing—near its entrance, the inner harbor has little to offer the recreational boater.
To the east, though, in Henry Cove at the base of the Schoodic Peninsula on the road entering the local section of Acadia National Park, lies the Winter Harbor Marine Center. The 3.4-acre site has more than 300 feet of water frontage and a large granite wharf with a boat ramp and float that provides deep-water access to the harbor, fueling services, and more than a dozen registered moorings. They’re the only moorings close to the center of Winter Harbor available to visitors and recreational boaters.
Town records show the land and buildings—two storage facilities and a small, 3-bedroom house—as having an assessed value of $840,500. Currently the property is for sale, listed with LandVest-Christie’s for $4.95 million, and locals are worried about the future of this important piece of the town’s working waterfront.
In addition to offering moorings, tie-up space and, in the past, some boat storage and repair services, the property currently serves as the base for the Bar Harbor ferry, run by Downeast Windjammer Cruise Lines, which runs five daily round trips across Frenchman Bay from spring through fall. The Island Explorer bus service also does hourly drop-offs and pick-ups at the site seven days a week.
The Winter Harbor Marine Center property has been owned by Pettegrow Properties LLC since 2015, and before that by Anthony and Josette Pettegrow who acquired the site in 2000.
The Schoodic Institute recently leased the property for a 20-year term, with an option to renew for an additional 20 years. But the lease terminated around the time of the COVID pandemic, according to Bob DeForrest, who manages projects in eastern Hancock County for the Maine Coast Heritage Trust. While it was leased to the institute, the property continued to serve as a boatyard and marina.
In recent years, DeForrest said, the marine center has seen a variety of uses in addition to its role as the Bar Harbor ferry terminal. Some local fishermen have landed urchins and scallops at the property, and for a while, a bait company operated there. The Maine Marine Patrol maintains a small boat at the site, which has the only all-tide launching ramp near the center of town. The ramp is also used by the Winter Harbor volunteer fire department.
According to Steven Pagels, owner of the company that operates the ferry, the Pettegrows have been good landlords.
“They’ve been really good working with us,” Pagels said recently. “They very much believe in working waterfront. They obviously went out and did it. They put their money where their mouth is.” He was “cautiously optimistic” that the marine center property would continue to be available as working waterfront.
“We’ve got to be creative about how to make it work,” he said. “We’ve got to be collaborative to make these things fly.”
Last September, Winter Harbor’s Select Board held a special public meeting to discuss the future of the marina property, according to notes prepared by Town Manager Sara Liscomb. About 60 people attended and, according to Liscomb, they raised several concerns about the potential sale, including what they said is the town’s inability to meet current demand for dockage. Residents voiced support for preserving the marina as year-round working waterfront and for redeveloping it for a mix of seasonal and year-round uses.
The meeting also explored options for the future ownership and management of the site, including acquisition by the town and some form of joint public-private acquisition or a “nonprofit ownership model.” As is often the case, it’s unclear where the funds to accomplish any of these plans would come from.
Maine does have a Working Waterfront Access Protection Program that, through the Land for Maine’s Future Program, provides matching funds to help preserve waterfront properties for commercial fishing and aquaculture use. But the process under that program is complex and relatively slow moving.
In late December, Liscomb said that there had been no apparent progress towards sorting out the future of the marine center property.
“There’s been no follow up, no changes,” Liscomb said. “There’s been a lot of talk but no money.”
