COURTESY / TAYLOR APPOLLONIO
Sea Meadow Marine Foundation's goal is to preserve a Yarmouth boatyard at 123 Even Keel Road as working waterfront.
December 2, 2022
A year after Yarmouth boatyard deal, new owner explores upgrades
Courtesy / Sea Meadow Marine
An oyster grower is one of numerous aquaculture operations at Sea Meadow Marine in Yarmouth.
Sea Meadow Marine, a nonprofit marine center on Cousins River in Yarmouth, has attracted a slew of users and is now looking to upgrade its water, sewer and power systems.
“It’s a great little piece of the river and a great community and site that can serve Freeport and Yarmouth,” Chad Strater, president of Sea Meadow Marine Foundation’s board of directors, told Mainebiz.
The two-year-old foundation bought the yard, at 123 Even Keel Road, a year ago from Jamie and Joseph Lowell, brothers who operate Even Keel Marine Specialties Inc. at the site.
Sea Meadow’s vision is creating a business incubator and marine hub for early-stage fisheries and sustainable aquaculture alongside marina services, heritage boat builders and recreational marine organizations.
The 12-acre site includes two industrial buildings, totaling 6,352 square feet, built in 1950.
Strater, who led the acquisition, has seen the vision materialize. New developments include new board members with backgrounds in sustainable fisheries, architecture, design and real estate. Visitors have included students from Portland’s Maine College of Art & Design, which held a couple of onsite classes to talk about marine-related topics such as aquaculture and the working waterfront.
About 30 students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Architecture in Cambridge visited the facility in September for similar discussions and to develop ideas for facility upgrades.
In November, Strater and board member Rebecca Rundquist traveled to Cambridge to view the drafts of the students’ proposed designs.
“We’ve had a lot of email correspondence with them and talked about things like aquaculture, the working waterfront in Maine, site restrictions and what we’re doing,” said Strater.
Ten of the MIT students took on a project to develop site plans for Sea Meadow, looking at building designs, the ecosystem as a whole and ways to redevelop a thriving working waterfront, he said.
The site has a family history of boatbuilding going back more than 100 years. Carroll Lowell — Jamie and Joseph Lowell’s father — established Even Keel Marine in 1961.
But the site has infrastructure challenges, including inadequate water and sewer systems.
Strater began looking at buying the property about three years ago. The deal took employed a master lease and a lease-back so Strater could begin to organize the boatyard before the purchase was final and demonstrate to the bank that he could develop the income stream necessary to make the numbers work.
The arrangement went into effect in July 2020, when Strater leased the entire property from the Lowell brothers.
Strater then acted as the property’s landlord and leased space to aquaculture operators and other tenants — including the Lowell brothers — even though he didn’t yet own the property. The arrangement meant that Strater could begin to generate income from the property while the ownership arrangement was being worked out, including the formation of Sea Meadows Marine Foundation.
The foundation’s mission is to preserve Maine's working waterfront through a collaborative, sustainable approach to regenerate the coast, improve marine and public health, and protect maritime heritage.
Now, partners include aquaculture service providers Blue Trace, Compass Aquaculture Solutions and Net Your Problem. Tenants include oyster producer Maine Ocean Farms, Love Point Oysters, and Maine Family Sea Farm Co-Op members Butterfield Shellfish, Googin’s Legendary Farm, Pound of Tea Oysters, Madeleine Point Oyster Farms, shellfish and kelp producer Spartan Sea Farms and Casco Bay Mooring.
The site is home to Greene Marine, a boat service and storage provider and a builder of racing and cruising multi-hull boats. Downeast Custom Boats, the producer of boats from the Lowell and Frost families, is also on site. In addition, Yarmouth Rowing Club uses the site as a base of operations.
And Strater and a partner, Nick Planson — who is a Sea Meadow board member — created a new business called the Boat Yard, to provide boat storage and service to work boats and recreational boats, to sell electric motors and build electrical charging infrastructure. The company is a dealer for electric boat engine maker Torqeedo.
Today, the Boat Yard is at capacity with about 100 stored boats, he said. Goals there include developing ecologically friendly boat storage and service options.
“Everyone wants to shrink wrap,” he said. “We’re looking at other ways to store your boat, such as indoor and canvas covers.”
When Strater began looking into the acquisition, he, Planson and other marine professionals in the area formed a volunteer board of directors and start Sea Meadow Marine Foundation, with the goal of preserving 123 Even Keel Road and other maritime assets.
They obtained a U.S. Department of Agriculture Community Facilities loan from Coastal Enterprises Inc. and an operating grant from the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation in Freeport.
Now the board is discussing upgrades, including to the water, sewer and power systems.
Courtesy / Sea Meadow Marine
MIT architecture students have been developing designs for the Yarmouth yard.
Sea Meadow’s board contracted with GEI Consultants Inc. in Portland to develop a site plan that’s viewed as a collaborative process with the facility’s users, said Strater.
“We have to have something that everyone needs and that’s not too much for the site,” he said. “We know that it’s not the right place for a big industrial facility. And we like the small-scale community that we have now. So we want to make sure it works for everyone.”
He added, “We’re not trying to rush into it. It took us long enough to achieve purchasing the property and we don’t want to make any missteps now.”
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