Courtesy / United States Coast Guard
Construction is beginning this week on seven family housing units in the town of Perry, designed to serve nearby Station Eastport personnel.
Updated: July 20, 2021
Ashore in Washington County, the Coast Guard tackles scarce housing
Courtesy / U.S. Coast Guard
Twelve family housing units, along with a maintenance building and infrastructure, were completed in early June for Station Jonesport personnel. Seven families have already moved in.
The U.S. Coast Guard has completed construction of a family housing development for its Station Jonesport personnel and has another project in the pipeline for service members stationed in Eastport.
The stations are in Washington County and are considered two of the more remote sites for the maritime armed service, Lt. Cmdr. Jonathan Rebuck, construction branch chief at the Coast Guard Facility Design and Construction Center in Norfolk, Va., told Mainebiz.
Rebuck’s office is in charge of the construction of the two projects.
The federally funded projects stemmed from housing market survey analyses that deemed the region a “critical housing area” for the Coast Guard, said Rebuck.
“Housing is not necessarily all that affordable and it can be hard to find,” he said.
Planning began about six years ago to identify the type of housing needed and to find suitable locations for the two developments.
“We try to take care of our families and our members,” he said. “So when these critical housing areas are identified, we do our best to provide something within a reasonable commuting distance and with services you’d hopes to have in your normal life. When we did the analyses, we realized these places would greatly benefit from those homes.”
Jonesport
The $12.5 million sustainable housing project for crews of Coast Guard Station Jonesport and U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Moray was completed ahead of schedule, according to a news release.
Located on a 28-acre parcel, the development consists of 12 housing units: five duplexes and two accessible units, along with a maintenance building, roads and utilities.
Atherton Construction, a general contracting firm in Henderson, Nev., that specializes in federal work, led the project.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held June 8 and seven families from Station Jonesport, which employs 28 Coast Guard personnel, live there now, said Rebuck.
The address of the development is 353 Mill River Road, but plans are in the works to rename the road MK3 Carlos Tapia Road, in memory of a member who was stationed at Coast Guard Station Jonesport. Machinery Technician 3rd Class Carlos Tapia was killed in a car accident, along with his wife Rachelle and their 4-year-old daughter Mackenzie, in September 2010.
Eastport
Construction is just getting started for a housing development designed to serve Station Eastport.
The development is located at 576 Shore Road in the nearby town of Perry.
The project is sited on a heavily wooded 75-acre site with a mix of wetlands and open fields and farmland, according to an environmental assessment for the site’s development.
Of the 75 acres, 60 acres will be left undisturbed, said Rebuck.
The $9 million project will construct two single-family houses, with four bedrooms and 2,500 square feet each, and five homes with three bedrooms and 2,300 square feet each, said Rebuck.
Initial work on the project was expected to begin Monday. Completion could be as early as summer 2022, he said.
Ducas Construction of Scarborough was contracted to lead the project. Acorn Engineering of Portland was retained to provide civil engineering services.
Station Eastport consists of a crew of 21 personnel and two boats that serve a 100-mile stretch of coastline.
According to the assessment, the development is needed because the supply of vacant housing in the Eastport area that meets the agency’s housing standards is inadequate. Currently, personnel are provided a housing allowance and must find housing on their own.
The Eastport area was designated a critical housing area by the Coast Guard in the early 2000s.
The designation is recognition that a geographic area has “extremely limited community-based housing, generally defined as less than a 3% vacancy rate,” the assessment says.
It adds that personnel “are forced to find housing in larger city centers such as Calais and East Machias, which are much farther away from Eastport than Perry.”
Long commutes to and from Station Eastport have the potential to affect mission-readiness, and the inability to find appropriately-sized housing that is affordable can affect the ability of service members to have their spouses and/or children live with them, the assessment says.
“Separation of families can lead to impacts to morale which negatively affect job performance and mission readiness,” the assessment says. “Dealing with unreasonably high housing expenses could also result in detrimental long-term personal financial impacts. Ultimately, USCG strives to ensure that steps are taken to minimize lifestyle impacts to service members in order to care for the military families and guarantee that important national missions are executed without interruption.”
The majority of housing stock in the Eastport market area is occupied or for seasonal use, the assessment adds.
Station Eastport dates back to the establishment of a life-saving service at a nearby bay called Carry Place Cove in 1873. It’s the most northeastern Coast Guard search and rescue station in the United States.
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