With EPA grant, Eastport is a step closer to reviving Boat School
Courtesy / Friends of The Boat School Marine Trades Development Corp.
The Boat School sits just after the entrance to Shackford Head State Park, at the base of a small peninsula between Deep Cove and Broad Cove.
An Eastport group has been working for years to bring back the Boat School, a marine trades vocational education facility located at the Maine Marine Technology Center.
A recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency brownfield cleanup grant of $675,000, for the removal of hazardous materials removal on the school’s campus at 16 Deep Cove Road, could help advance the project.
The award went to the Friends of The Boat School Marine Trades Development Corp., which said the grant will allow the Boat School “to remove potential threats to human health and the environment in the three industrial-style buildings” of the 8.4-acre campus.
The three buildings are the 21,000-square-foot Boat School, 6,000-square-foot Harborhood Community Center and 5,000-square-foot Deep Cove Marine Science Station, known as the BioLab.
“The award of the brownfield grant is the foundation of our mission to restore the Maine Marine Technology Center campus, home of the Boat School, to its historic role as a key economic driver and community resource,” said Meg McGarvey, board chair of Friends of the Boat School.
Priorities include cleaning up the 8.4-acre Maine Marine Technology Center property at 16 Deep Cove Road in Eastport. Groundwater is contaminated with 1,2-Dichloroethane. PCBs, mercury, solvents, petroleum products, and inorganic materials have been found within buildings on the property.
The goal is to initiative extensive infrastructure renewal in 2024 and 2025, to renovate and outfit the three buildings for a project reopening in 2026, according to the friends.
All buildings have been unoccupied and unused since 2012.
Problems with the buildings include leaks, mildew and various types of damage, plus various code issues, according to an architectural assessment conducted in 2017.
The estimated total for renovations, updates, new systems and groundwork, across five phases, is $4.22 million. That includes the $675,000 awarded by the EPA.
“As a member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, I stand with the Friends’ endeavor to return these facilities and lands to useful condition, and I realize their importance to tribal marine interests,” said Dale Mitchell, Sipayik Environmental Department Brownfields program coordinator .
Friends of the Boat School promotes marine trades education and development, and is raising funds to redevelop the site and reopen the school.
“In Eastport and throughout the Maine coast, everyone remembers ‘The Boat School,’ the vibrant, community-oriented resource that brought students, professors, researchers and guests to the Maine Marine Technology Center — as the campus is officially known — from 1978 to 2012,” the friends group says on its website.
The group said reopening the school, community center and lab is expected to result in
education, jobs and economic and community resources.
“Friends of The Boat School have been working hard to return the campus to its intended use: educational programs geared towards Maine’s marine trades industry, infrastructure for the blue economy, and a venue for social and civic events,” the group said.
Storied history
Maine Marine Technology Center has served as the home of the Boat School since 1978. It’s also offered specialized marine research facilities, provided community-oriented services and spaces and supplied resources for local mariners.
The school was originally located in Lubec and was the longest-running boatbuilding educational institution in the U.S. when it outgrew the Lubec location and moved to Eastport at Deep Cove Road, formerly the site of Sealife Industries, which became Maine Marine Technology Center.
The school originated under the auspices of the Maine Department of Educational and Cultural Services, and transitioned from a vocational technical institute offering certificate and diploma options in boatbuilding, commercial fisheries, marine mechanics, and marine and industrial coatings to a technical community college awarding associate degrees in applied science.
Westlawn’s Institute of Marine Technology, a nationally accredited distance-learning school of small-craft design, also had a base at the Maine Marine Technology Center.
Marine industry work of various types was conducted at the center, such as Ocean Renewable Power Corp. collaboration with staff on a prototype tidal generator development, along with aquaculture industry workshops and an experimental submersible halibut cage design project.
Friends of the Boat School Marine Trades Development Corp. was formed by area residents who objected to a 2005 proposal to relocate the Boat School to the Washington County Community College campus in Calais.
After the successful effort to keep the Boat School in Eastport, the friends in 2011 became the legal owners of the center’s three buildings — the BioLab, the administrative/community building and the Boat School building — and nine acres of waterfront property.
The friends now seek to provide “a state-of-the-art physical infrastructure and expert staff” for the Boat School and its associate marine resource center, a marine biology research and laboratory station, and a community facility.
To learn more about redevelopment plans, click here.
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