Courtesy / Molly Haley
Chad Strater.
December 22, 2021
Nonprofit buys Yarmouth boatyard to preserve working waterfront
Courtesy / Taylor Appollonio
Sea Meadow Marine Foundation formed a year ago to preserve a Yarmouth boatyard at 123 Even Keel Road as working waterfront.
A year-old nonprofit in southern Maine has acquired a 12-acre boatyard in Yarmouth as the launch of a mission to preserve working waterfront.
The Sea Meadow Marine Foundation bought the yard, at 123 Even Keel Road on the Cousins River, from Jamie and Joseph Lowell, brothers who operate Even Keel Marine Specialties Inc. at the site.
Sea Meadow’s vision is to create a business incubator and marine business hub for early-stage fisheries and sustainable aquaculture businesses alongside marina services, heritage boat builders and recreational marine organizations, according to a news release.
Even Keel offers boat services and storage and hosts the Yarmouth Rowing Club’s activities.
Financing and guidance for the deal were provided by Coastal Enterprises Inc. and support from the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation, according to the release.
The site includes two industrial buildings totaling 6,352-square-feet and built in 1950.
The acquisition was led by New Gloucester resident Chad Strater, president of Sea Meadow’s board of directors and co-owner of a small marine construction business called Coastal Maine Hardscape, which he’s operated at 123 Even Keel Road for the past four years.
“The working waterfront is a critical aspect of Maine’s economy and environmental health,” Strater said in the release. “If the working waterfront goes away, it’s not coming back. We are excited to move forward with this project.”
Of the state’s 3,400 miles of coastline, the working waterfront has been whittled down to only 21 miles that allow critical access for enterprises such as fishing, aquaculture, boat building and boatyards, said Bill Perna, a board member, author and director of a podcast series that focuses on Maine Aquaculture.
“These small remaining waterfronts, which employ many hard-working Mainers, are threatened by private, mostly residential, land purchases,” Perna said in the news release.
Good match
The purchase price was $1.22 million, Kirk Butterfield of KW Commercial Group at Keller Williams Realty told Mainebiz.
“I think it’s a fair price and a win-win deal for both parties,” said Butterfield, who represented the sellers.
There was plenty of interest from potential buyers who had ideas for converting it to residential, he said.
That wasn’t what the Lowell brothers had in mind, he said.
“The Lowells always wanted to see this property stay working waterfront,” Butterfield said.
Courtesy / KW Commercial Group at Keller Williams Realty
The Lowell brothers’ boat building shop is in the background.
That made the deal with Sea Meadow Marine Foundation a good match, he added.
The Lowells have a family history of boatbuilding going back more than 100 years, according to their company’s website. Their father, Carroll Lowell, established Even Keel Marine in 1961.
The site has some infrastructure challenges that will add a layer of costs for the buyer, he noted.
“A big challenge has been that the land and the buildings are lacking in infrastructure” including adequate water and sewer systems, he said.
Creative deal
Butterfield began working with the sellers nearly four years ago and engaged with Chad Strater approximately two years ago.
“So this was a deal that took some time in the making,” he said. “Ultimately, in order to make this deal work, we employed a master lease and a lease-back strategy so that the buyer could begin to organize the boatyard the way he wanted to and at the same time 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 and meant that Strater leased the entire property from the Lowell brothers. Strater could then act as the property’s landlord and lease space out 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.
Slater told Mainebiz he became familiar with the property four years ago. He located his business there to have a place to build marine infrastructure such as piers, docks and seawalls; to keep his barge and workboat; and to have easy access to the water for delivery of materials to offshore islands.
Aquaculture interest
About two years ago, he began introducing the property to friends in the aquaculture industry who were using public waterfront access sites for their operations.
“There’s a lot of shuffling of equipment and logistics that has to happen to make aquaculture work from a public access point,” he said.
Since then, over half a dozen aquaculture firms have begun using the site’s waterfront. That includes Yarmouth-based Madeleine Point Oyster Farms, oyster producer Maine Ocean Farms, and shellfish and kelp producer Spartan Sea Farms.
The site is also the long-time home to Greene Marine, a boat service and storage provider and a builder of racing and cruising multi-hull boats whose founder, Walter Greene, is in the Maine Boatbuilder's Hall of Fame, according to the company’s website.
Courtesy / KW Commercial Group at Keller Williams Realty
The building here is the long-time home of Greene Marine, a boat service and storage provider and a builder of racing and cruising multi-hull boats, which will remain in place.
Along with operating his mooring business, Strater has been busy cleaning the yard and creating useable space for new stakeholders.
He and a partner, Nick Planson — who is a Sea Meadow board member — also created a new business called the Boat Yard, to provide boat storage and service to workboats and recreational boats, to sell electric motors, and to build electrical charging infrastructure. The company is a dealer for electric boat engine maker Torqeedo.
“We’re focusing on sustainable ecological growth to create income for the property first and foremost, and also to be an electric boatyard,” said Strater.
Forming a nonprofit
Strater said he began looking into the acquisition about three years ago when a local oyster farmer told him the parcel was on the market.
Strater, Planson and other marine professionals in the area joined together to form a volunteer board of directors and start Sea Meadow Marine Foundation, with the goal of preserving 123 Even Keel Road and other maritime assets.
“A lot of them are right on the precipice of being sold into the residential real estate market,” he said
Sea farmers, dock and boat builders, business innovators and land use specialists collaborated with the board.
Courtesy / KW Commercial Group at Keller Williams Realty
The goal is to upgrade maritime infrastructure, including charging stations for electric boat motors.
“We wanted to be able to take advantage of grant funding and donations,” he said.
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. The grant and loan funds are also expected to help support a business incubator/marine business hub for early-stage fisheries and sustainable aquaculture businesses alongside marina services, heritage boat builders and recreational marine organizations.
The current tenants support 26 working waterfront jobs in oyster, kelp, quahog and scallop farm operations, boat building and service companies. Yarmouth Rowing Club uses it as a base of operations.
Bootstrapping
Improvements to the property up to now has been a bootstrap affair of clearing debris.
“We hadn’t owned it, so we haven’t been able to get permits to rebuild infrastructure,” he said. “Now that we own it, we plan to move forward with going in front of the town with a full plan of what we’d like to do with the property, depending on what we’re able to do with zoning restrictions.”
That includes upgrading water, sewer and power systems.
The buildings are in serviceable condition.
“We’ll upgrade them as necessary,” he continued. “We’d like to put in a new building before we get too far into upgrading the existing buildings. But it will depend on what we’re allowed to do. We want to work with the town and with the community and see what they want here, as far as public access and infrastructure for businesses and jobs.”
The board is working with Baker Design Consultants in Freeport to develop a plan. The goal is to break ground next summer on a new building, he added.
The foundation will launch a fundraising campaign, develop educational and marine innovation programs, and continue to work with partners, according to the release.
“We’re seeing working waterfront disappear from Maine at a pretty alarming rate,” he said. “By working with other industries, we’re hoping to make enough of a difference that some of these properties that might be in danger of going away will be able to be there for the next generation. The working waterfront is a very important part of Maine. And they don’t make new ones."
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