Preserving working waterfront is one of the biggest challenges coastal communities face.
Recent success stories usually involve community members working with a wide variety of groups, from nonprofit organizations to land trusts, to keep wharves and boatyards from becoming luxury summer homes.
So the recent transfer of the Chebeague Island Boatyard is unusual. It was a private sale that preserved the island’s only boatyard.
On Jan. 5, Hartley and Dianne Brewer sold the 3.5-acre boatyard to Chebeague Island resident Paul Belesca and Scott Searway, a Cumberland resident who has a summer home on the island.
The deal took sellers dedicated to making sure their life’s work wouldn’t disappear and two buyers with the conviction that the Chebeague boatyard can continue to be a successful business.
“There’s no question I did not want to see the property developed,” said Searway. “It’s a beautiful piece of property and it needs to stay a working boatyard.”
The property was first put on the market in July 2005 for just under $2.1 million. The parties involved did not wish to name the final price, but Belesca gives credit to the Brewers for selling the property as a boatyard. “The Brewers held to their principles that it remain a boatyard,” he said. “In saying that, they didn’t pursue to the end, highest value. Clearly, highest value for this property is residential conversion.”
Hartley and Dianne Brewer ran the boatyard together. The Chebeague Island Boatyard has been in the Brewer family since it was started in 1960 by Alden Brewer, Hartley’s father. “We’re happy that it is staying as a yard,” said Hartley.
It started small. “The first year that my father had it, we had just two boats in the field that year,” he said.
Now there are over 150 boats stored there, including much of the island lobsterboat fleet. The boatyard also has a wharf, floats, a marine railway, a Caterpillar forklift, a 3,500-square-foot service-and-repair building and a 3,000-gallon above-ground fuel storage tank.
Both Belesca and Searway praised the Brewers’ operation. “One of the things we need to do is to be able to replicate what the Brewers did, in the sense they have a lot of integrity, and what they said, they did,” said Searway.
But there will be some changes. “There is a need to grow,” said Belesca. “Anytime you acquire a business like this, to make it all work, you have to do more.”
“First and foremost, it’s going to remain a boatyard,” said Belesca. “We intend to expand the marine services, mechanical work, as well as seasonal work that’s done here,” Belesca said. He plans to build in a large workshop in existing storage space in the service building. They also plan to hire island mechanic David Stevens, who owned Stevens Mechanical Services, to come work at the yard.
They plan to lay another set of railroad tracks in the main building, so that two vessels can be worked on at the same time, Belesca said. They also plan to offer marine diesel fuel at the boatyard’s wharf, in addition to the gasoline pump that is already on the dock.
The new owners have already started using a boatyard fuel truck to sell heating oil on Chebeague.
One thing that won’t change is the selling of gas for island vehicles. The boatyard is also Chebeague’s only gas station.
Belesca said the Brewers sold gas at a fixed profit margin in recent years, “and we’re going to honor that. When it goes up and down, that’s going to be because of external factors, not in an effort to increase the profitability of that part of the venture.”
There have been rumors that the boatyard might offer food, Belesca said. “It’s not on our short list at the time,” he said. “There’s a perception that there’s an awful lot of boating traffic in the summer that we could draw in. And maybe that’s true. But at the outset, we’re going to focus on marine activities and things that complement that.”
The two partners are both graduates of Maine Maritime Academy, Belesca in 1984 and Searway in 1966. That gave them a connection when they spoke to each other for the first time about the boatyard deal in the late fall of 2005.
Belesca worked as an engineer on vessels all over the world for 10 years, then as a vice president for Seaworthy Systems of Essex, Conn., a naval architecture and engineering firm.
Searway shipped out as an engineer for two years, then worked for Stone & Webster Engineering, of Boston. He then founded a company that specializes in building and retrofitting paper mills, SW&B Construction Corporation. He sold that company in the late 1990s.
It’s unusual that a private sale preserved this boatyard. Harpswell residents are working with several agencies to help preserve Holbrook’s Wharf in Cundy’s Harbor. Two lobstermen from York Harbor worked with Coastal Enterprises Inc. (CEI) and the York River Land Trust to purchase a fishermen’s wharf near Sewall’s Bridge.
“It sounds like these are two guys whose hearts are in the right place,” said Hugh Cowperthwaite, CEI’s fisheries project coordinator, about the Chebeague Boatyard sale. “It’s fortunate they were able to partner on this. It’s a good example.”