College of the Atlantic opens foothold in nearby Northeast Harbor

Courtesy / College of the Atlantic The Mount Desert Center, a partnership between College of the Atlantic and Mount Desert 365, opened last week in Northeast Harbor with apartment and retail space.

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By Laurie Schreiber

The Mount Desert Center, a partnership between College of the Atlantic and Mount Desert 365, opened last week with two elements in place — apartment space for students and faculty and street-level retail space that’s leased to an “island kitchen collective” called Salt Market.

The center is at 141 Main St. in Northeast Harbor, which is part of the town of Mount Desert on Mount Desert Island.

The center comprises living space for 15 of the college’s students, an apartment for college staff or faculty, and the new market.

Mount Desert 365 is a community-based organization dedicated to promoting long-term economic vitality in Mount Desert.

Residential space

The center was designed to blend with the village’s Main Street vernacular.

MD365 owns the land where the building sits. COA holds a long-term lease with the group. Funding for the project came from COA’s Broad Reach Capital Campaign, a $57 million fundraising effort that wrapped up last year.

“Our mission is to revitalize the community, and that means having more people live and work here year round,” MD365’s executive director, Kathy Miller, said in a news release. “Having 15 students here will fill that gap for starters.”

As part of the partnership, the students living at the center make a commitment to engage with Mount Desert-based organizations in exchange for reduced rent.

“It's really exciting to have a mission-driven footprint that helps us meet student housing needs and, at the same time, helps bring more of a year-round community to Northeast Harbor,” said College of the Atlantic President Darron Collins.

The building has a number of sustainability-oriented features. These include Gutex brand wood fiberboard insulation, rooftop solar panels and electric heat pumps for heating and cooling. The building has a super-tight envelope and heat-capturing ventilation for fresh air. Bucksport architect John Gordon led the project.

“COA is all about studying and practicing human ecology — humans’ relationships with our natural, social, and built environments — so how we build is core to our mission,” Collins said.

As part of COA’s building occupancy permit, the school agreed to acquire seven off-street parking spaces for residents. The center will utilize parking at St. Ignatius Church on Lookout Way.

Retail space

Salt Market is a project of COA alumna Maude Kusserow, who graduated in 2015.

The market features local produce, flowers and bread, prepared foods and soups, a curated pantry, artisan goods, and specialty coffee drinks made with an authentic Italian La Marzocco espresso machine.

Courtesy / College of the Atlantic

The Salt Market is an “island kitchen collective” featuring local products.

“We have so many beautiful places here on Mount Desert Island, and so many beautiful products,” Kusserow said. “Salt Market is about honoring this place, and bringing together our wonderful community around good, sustainable food and amazing coffee.”

Kusserow, 32, has visited Mount Desert Island with her family since she was a baby.

“This place is really special to me,” she told Mainebiz. “I did my senior year at COA and had a really wonderful experience.”

After graduating from COA, her career was in art and creative direction for a number of firms that included a creative-industry network called Le Book, in Paris, as well as freelancing in the U.S.

When the pandemic hit, she and her partner were living in Brooklyn, N.Y., and decided to move to Maine for a while.

“We ended up falling in love with it,” she said.

She had been wanting to move away from art direction and into food production, so she started cooking for people unofficially.

A year ago, she approached friends at Beech Hill Farm, on the outskirts of the town of Mount Desert, to use their kitchen and produce to make prepared foods and soups to sell at the farm stand.

Courtesy / College of the Atlantic

Pivoting from a career in art direction, COA alumna Maude Kusserow opened the Salt Market as the next step in her commitment to the food industry.

She developed the Salt Market label based on a magazine called “The Salt” that she had developed at COA as a her senior project.

“That’s always felt like Maine to me — the salt in the air, the salt in the sea,” she said. “Salt has always felt synonymous with the island. So when I wanted to put a label on the things I was making, that was pretty easy.”

Soon after, she was approached by Shawn Keeley, COA’s dean of institutional advancement.

“He knew I was looking for a brick-and-mortar space,” she said.

The two agreed that she would lease the retail space at 141 Main St. COA built out the space based on specs she worked on with the architect.

Her goal is to bring in as much local inventory as possible.

“I feel like there are so many beautiful places on the island and in Maine — farmers, makers, artisans,” she said. “I wanted to have a community.”

The space includes a kitchen where Kusserow and her employees make prepared products such as cakes, cookies, soups and salads, as well as coffee.

A goal for the future is to work with local food pantries and with COA’s farm-based food access program called Share the Harvest.

The business is expected to run 10 months per year.

“We’re only closed January and February,” she said.

She has four employees.

The space is about 700 square feet and took an investment of about $80,000, financed by a bank loan. Equipment was sourced online and is mainly second-hand.

“It’s all eBay finds and things like that,” she said.

The startup is self-driven.

“I did a lot of research,” she said. “I asked for a lot of opinions and advice from people I knew and respected and who worked in finance management. I built out as much of the financial planning as I could on my own.”

Relationships with vendors have been developed by simply reaching out. That took some work in the beginning.

“When I showed up at Beech Hill Farm, I just said, ‘Hi, this is what I need,’” she related. “And there was a lot of, ‘No.’ Then there was a lot of pivoting. So it was just tenacity.”

Now, she said, vendors generally respond with enthusiasm.

“It was a matter of reaching out and telling them what the Salt Market was about,” she said. “I have a strong website. I think people really wanted — before they had their product in the store — to see a good website. I don’t think I got any ‘no’s. It was just about reaching out and saying, ‘Hi, I love your product, I’m opening a new store, I’d love to carry your items.’”

She plans to contact more vendors.

In 2019, realizing she wanted to work in the food industry, she became determined in that pursuit.

“I feel like I have a foot in two worlds – one in the summer community world, where I saw a need for prepared food, and one in the world of people who live here year-round,” she said. “It’s like, ‘Where can you get a lovely container of prepared soup with ingredients made on the island?’”

The market experienced a rush of customers on opening day. Kusserow credited her mother.

“This store is because of my mom,” she said. “She has taught me everything I know about aesthetics and food and community.”