Although the tourist season is winding down and the snack bar has closed at Holbrook’s Wharf in Cundy’s Harbor, Harpswell, as long as weather permits, the wharf will be buzzing with activity.
First, marine contractor Skip Rideout from Boothbay will completely tear down the wharf, then his team will begin work on reconstruction, with engineering expertise provided by Lincoln/Haney Engineering Associates in Brunswick. The new wharf will have expanded and improved facilities for commercial fishing enterprises, and updated equipment and space for the popular snack bar.
And yes, says Elsa Martz, who is on the board of the Holbrook Community Foundation, the driving force to save the wharf and associated properties, the new building on the wharf will look much the same and will be painted its traditional red.
Holbrook’s Wharf, built in the mid-1800s, has served just about every kind of fishing enterprise, first from its original location behind the Holbrook’s General Store, and later, after being destroyed by the 1938 hurricane, at its present site, slightly north.
Over the years, Holbrook’s has provided landing space for urchins, shrimp, lobsters, tuna and groundfish. “You name the fish,” says Martz-and has assured essential waterfront access in one of Maine’s oldest and most active fishing communities. Another small structure behind the store once processed sea moss.
The General Store, built in 1898 and rebuilt in the 1930s after being destroyed by a fire, was presided over for close to 75 years by Christine Miller, “Since I could count out a penny’s worth of candy,” she said in an interview. Her father, Edward Holbrook, had bought the store from Albert Ridley in 1908.
It housed the post office and also served the fishing community in essential ways, providing everything from groceries to fishing supplies and gear, cigars, ice cream, penny candy and horse rental, but perhaps most important, acted a community center where people could gather, share news, and put up and check announcements, messages and advertisements on a support post, which still displays the same sort of information.
Christine Miller lived all her life in the Holbrook-Trufant House, a magnificent Italianate home built between 1860 and 70 and purchased by her father in 1908.
These three properties, which had been purchased by Cape Cod residents who planned to use the wharf for landing tuna, were put up for sale as a package in 2002. Unlike many Maine coastal communities, where working waterfront property has been lost to private individuals and converted to residential and recreational use, (according to a study by the Island Institute, 20 miles of Maine’s 5,300-mile shoreline is dedicated to working waterfront purposes), Cundy’s Harbor residents joined forces to save the wharf, house and store, to protect this vital access which had been the scene of so many commercial fishing enterprises.
The grass-roots effort began at a coffee klatch where several local women discussed the property’s future and expressed a determination to save their heritage.
By 2005, concerned residents had met with people from the Trust for Public Land, a national organization that assists efforts to provide livable communities for generations to come. That year, the Holbrook Community Foundation (HCF) was formed as a non-profit organization. The organization’s 15-member Board of Directors includes president Bill Mangum, a small business and tax consultant; Sue Hawkes, who comes from a fifth- generation seafaring family, Josie Quintrell, a marine policy consultant; Lendall Alexander, a commercial fisherman for 30 years and industry advocate; and Cal Hancock, who owns a specialty seafood manufacturing business.
HCF obtained financial assistance from over 500 private donors, a low-cost loan from the Genesis Fund, a grant from the Land for Maine’s Future Working Waterfront Access Pilot Program, and a donation from the Town of Harpswell, to raise the $1.2 million needed to purchase the Holbrook property. The Island Institute also provided a technical assistance grant to help in the application process for the working waterfront grant. Subsequently, HCF raised additional funds from individuals and other foundations so it could begin to clean up and improve the properties and repay a bridge loan from the Genesis Foundation.
Since the purchase, HCF has made giant strides in restoring the properties. Holbrook-Trufant house has been re-roofed, re-plumbed, cleaned, and painted and now has occupants in two apartments plus a small gallery.
Volunteers cleaned out the store and surrounding areas; the store, which is seasonal like the wharf snack bar, reopened in the summer of 2007. It offers WiFi and stocks an eclectic assortment of a few staples, snack foods and pastries, local canned goods and jellies and tourist items. (Watson’s General Store down the road, which is open year-round, carries staples and fishing supplies.)
To provide water for the wharf, store and house, HCF made repairs to the old system, but Martz says it couldn’t meet the three properties’ needs. Instead, Air and Water Quality, Inc. of Freeport installed a state-of-the-art desalinization system which pumps water from beneath the wharf, pipes it to a series of filters in the store’s basement and then to the wharf, store and the Holbrook-Trufant house.
Last winter, volunteers removed the unsafe dock behind the General Store. Ben Wallace of Redfish Marine, Inc. in Harpswell, built a new dock with five floats that allow plenty of room for recreational boaters to tie up and visit the snack bar and village. Commercial fishermen use access at the other side of the wharf.
After necessary structural repairs were made to ensure the safety of the wharf, the snack bar was leased in 2007 to Kathleen and Shelden Morse of Harpswell, then to Robert Graves of Small Point in 2008. Other space on the wharf has been rented to Maguro America to receive and ship out tuna caught along the coast. Combined, the Holbrook-Trufant house, the General Store and the wharf have earned sufficient income to cover operating expenses.
Now HCF looks forward to beginning the major wharf restoration and expansion, which will be completed next spring. Plans call for approximately 6,000 square feet of space dedicated solely to fishing uses. Exactly what these uses will be depends on what the community needs. “We’re not sure at all,” says Cundy’s Harbor native Sue Hawkes, who has been involved in the initiative since its inception. Her family owns Hawkes’ Lobster next to Holbrook’s Wharf; her husband and sons are fishermen. The foundation “will continue to ask the community for input as we become more ready.”
Hawkes and Martz emphasize that the HCF mission stipulates that future commercial enterprises should not compete with other local businesses. “It could have to do with bait, maybe some sort of small processing operation, perhaps a machine shop, perhaps ice,” Martz says. “We want to be flexible and provide what the community asks for.” All they are sure of at this point is that there will be three storage bays, room to accommodate up to four or five marine businesses, an all-tide deep water dock where commercial fishing boats can load and unload product, and access for trucks.
HCF estimates a $400,000 price tag for this project. “We already have raised $200,000 towards it,” says Martz. The organization will continue fund-raising to ensure that the wharf retains its place in the community as vital working waterfront.
For further information, go to www.holbrookcommunityfoundation.org.