Portland Fish Exchange signs deal to stay 'resilient'
The Portland Fish Exchange is leasing out more than a third of its space on Portland's waterfront to a local seafood processor as it attempts to make up revenue lost in the dramatic fall of fish landings at its pier over the last decade.
After a two-year search for a tenant to rent some of the 30,000 square feet it has on the Portland Fish Pier, the Portland Fish Exchange today said it has rented 11,000 square feet to Portland-based Cozy Harbor Seafood. The fish exchange, which has seen the annual amount of fish it auctions fall from 30 million pounds a decade ago to roughly 10 million pounds last year, is currently running cash positive, but just barely, Thomas Valleau, president of the fish exchange, told Mainebiz. The 10-year lease agreement is worth $1.1 million to the fish exchange. It will also reduce its annual utility bill by up to $10,000. "[The deal] gives us a financial cushion and it makes us more resilient as a business," Valleau says.
The deal also gives the fish exchange more flexibility in the face of groundfishing's uncertain future, he says. Next spring, groundfishing regulations will change from a days-at-sea fisheries management plan to a sector-based plan. "It's hard for us to anticipate what that might mean for the exchange," Valleau says. "We've positioned ourselves better by downsizing our space and developing new revenue sources for whatever comes along in 2010 when the industry goes to a sector-based management plan."
For its part, Cozy Harbor Seafood plans to move 25 employees from its main plant on Saint John Street to its new space alongside the fish exchange, creating as many as 10 new jobs in the process. Cozy Harbor has had a long relationship with the fish exchange, having bought the first batch of fish auctioned at the Portland Fish Exchange when it opened in 1986.
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