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Stonington plans to add access to its working waterfront from the site of a historic downtown building, a project years in the making.
The town is looking for grant funding to stabilize the shoreline behind the Independent Order of Odd Fellows hall it purchased two summers ago and create a new pier and ramp for more float space. The project would provide room for additional dinghies next to its existing public fish pier and add resiliency to sea level rise.
The property’s renovation shows how one Maine fishing community is approaching preserving its working waterfront as coastal towns across the state grapple with increasing values and residential demand for properties on the water. It also aims to preserve public access among other efforts to make the town’s infrastructure more resilient to climate change — if outside funding is available.
“It’s very important to Stonington to stay a fishing community forever,” said Linda Nelson, the town’s economic and community development director.
Along with shoreline work, the project aims to add a public ramp and pier adjacent to the town’s commercial fishing pier. Two 5-by-40-foot sections of aluminum ramp would extend into the harbor, with a 12-by-12 float connecting them and another 12-by-20-foot float at the end, according to permitting drawings.
Stonington’s relatively small harbor is crowded and uses a lottery system to award dinghy space so lobstermen can reach their boats at moorings.
The town has about 350 lobster license holders, one of the highest numbers in Maine, according to Nelson, though not all of them are actively fishing. She said Stonington is working to find access for its residents and maintain it in a climate-resilient way.
The town has been Maine’s most valuable lobster port for years, bringing in more than $49 million worth in 2025, according to state data. Its waterfront also sustained lingering damage from strong back-to-back storms in January 2024.
Stonington bought the three-story Independent Order of Odd Fellows hall, which the order had used for more than a century, on its waterfront main street in the summer of 2024 to help with infrastructure needs including waterfront access.
Voters had authorized borrowing money to help purchase it three years earlier, and the following year got $394,000 in federal funds toward a $525,000 purchase price from congressionally directed spending.
Residents also feared a private buyer might add a private dock, changing the downtown and limiting water access, Town Manager Kathleen Billings told the BDN in 2021.
Nelson described the additional space Friday as a small expansion and said the project is about securing sustainable access to the waterfront as sea levels rise.
The $1.22 million waterfront work is totally dependent on outside funding, like numerous other infrastructure resiliency proposals on the island and in towns along the coast that come with big price tags small municipalities can’t cover alone. In Stonington, the town recently raised part of Oceanville Road and wants to raise two more roads near Burnt Cove harbor, along with its existing fish pier.
“Unless people live in coastal areas and are part of a working waterfront community, they have no idea how much infrastructure is jeopardized by climate change and warming waters,” Nelson said.
The town just submitted an application for the waterfront work to the state’s working waterfront infrastructure fund, Nelson said, which provides funding for projects preparing that infrastructure for the effects of climate change.
Future uses for the building itself will be discussed at select board meetings in the coming weeks, Nelson said. The town’s sanitary district offices are moving into the basement.
Ideas for other floors have included retail, offices, a public meeting space or apartments.
The local Odd Fellows are still active and moved to a new lodge in nearby Oceanville in 2024, which they planned to use sale proceeds to build, the Penobscot Bay Press reported. Their old hall had become a financial burden that was increasingly hard to maintain, according to that paper.
