Camp lot lease tradition at risk New landowners, cancellations arouse concern about future

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For many Mainers, owning a camp on the water is the ultimate dream. For those without the financial means to buy waterfront property, the long-standing tradition of building camps on land leased from private landowners has often made that dream a reality.

Now, however, some people worry that a new breed of landowner that buys up large chunks of land for private enjoyment threatens this tradition. In some instances, the new owners are sending leaseholders packing. The prospect of losing their camps or homes, some costing upwards of $100,000, has created anxiety among Maine’s 17,000 leaseholders.

Barbara DuCharme of Connecticut hoped that she and her husband, Ray, would enjoy their camp on Moosehead Lake for the rest of their lives. Now, they are planning the logistics of moving all their possessions out of the century-old cabin that is reachable only by boat.

The lease they have held since 1988 was canceled in May. They have until August to vacate the premises.

The land the camp sits on in Big Duck Cove on the eastern shore of Moosehead Lake was purchased in April by a wealthy Texas technology company executive who has owned an island on the opposite side of the lake for 10 years. Richard Brown, chairman of EDS, the company founded by H. Ross Perot, bought 20,000 acres in the East Middlesex Canal Grant in April from Mead Paper Co. Shortly thereafter the DuCharmes were informed that their lease had been canceled.

“A person from outside Maine didn’t honor the tradition,” DuCharme said this week from her home in Brooklyn, Conn. “Because that happened, it offers license to others to not honor the tradition.”

The tradition, DuCharme said, is for large landowners to lease camp lots to people for long periods of time, maybe generations. The family the DuCharmes bought their lease from for $55,000 had held it for 70 years. When considering purchasing the camp, DuCharme said they asked a local real estate agent about the leasing tradition.

He replied, “Leases are golden,” she recalled.

Anyone who believes a lease is forever is foolhardy, said several members of a coalition of town officials, businesspeople and area residents that seeks to preserve the traditional uses of the northern Maine forest.

At their monthly meeting in Greenville last week, members of the Maine Woods Coalition steering committee said it was unfortunate that some people were being forced to give up their camps on leased land but that private landowners can do as they wish with their property.

Dick Thornton, vice president of the Moosehead Riders Snowmobile Club, said leases, as contracts between a landowner and lessee, can be terminated at any time.

“Anyone who operates under any other notion is asking for trouble,” he said.

Greenville Town Manager John Simko likened the situation to that of renting an apartment from an owner who decides he no longer wants to rent the place out.

“You certainly don’t put up a $100,000 house on a one-year lease,” said Duke McKeil, executive director of the Moosehead Marine Museum. A chorus of “I wouldn’t” rose from the conference room table.

That’s just what has happened. The leasing program began decades ago with paper companies leasing small plots of land where hunters and fishermen put up small camps without running water and electricity.

Today, however, people have built $300,000 homes on land they don’t own. Most leases are for one to three years, although the state offers five-year leases on its land. All leases can be terminated with 90 days notice, although most have been renewed for decades.

According to the Maine Leaseholders Association, there are 17,000 such arrangements in the state right now. Most of the leases are on land owned by large timber companies in northern Maine.

A lot of timber company land has changed hands in recent years, however, and wealthy individuals have bought large swaths of land. Many of these “mini-kingdom” owners want the land for their own enjoyment and privacy and don’t want leased camps on their property.

Billionaire cable TV executive John Malone bought all the land around Spencer Lake south of Jackman from two paper companies and has canceled several individual leases there. Leases were also canceled on land recently purchased by a Massachusetts developer on Chesuncook Lake.

Both Brown and Malone have agreed to allow commercial sporting camps to continue to operate on land leased from them.

All told, fewer than a dozen leases have been canceled in recent years. Still, the president of the leaseholders association warns that more cancellations will be forthcoming.

“If you have a lease in Maine, you better well be concerned about it; it could be gone tomorrow,” said Stu Kallgren, who lives year-round in a house on land leased from Great Northern Paper Inc. on South Twin Lake near Millinocket. There are 40 other people who live on leased lots on the road to his house.

He grouses that his lease payment has steadily increased to nearly $2,000 a year. Still, in the 15 years he’s had the lease, Kallgren has not come close to paying the $27,000 at which his property is valued by the state.

While acknowledging this, Kallgren said Great Northern is charging him far more per year than the company pays in taxes on the lakefront land.

To this end, Kallgren pushed for a bill that would have capped lease payments, perhaps at three times the annual tax payment. It also would have required that if a lease is terminated, the leaseholder would have to be paid fair market value for the property and any improvements made to it.

The measure was killed by lawmakers.

A proposal calling for a study of traditional uses of Maine forestland, including leases, did pass. The two Senate members of that study committee, appointed Friday by Senate President Michael H. Michaud, D-East Millinocket, are Sen. Paul T. Davis Sr., R-Sangerville, and Sen. John L. Martin, D-Eagle Lake. Three House members will be named to the committee Monday by Speaker Michael V. Saxl, D-Portland. The panel is expected to make its recommendations by Nov. 1.

The study is necessary, said Rep. Sharon Libby Jones, D-Greenville, because traditions dating back 200 years are changing. She said fellow lawmakers would have to deal with “a double-edged sword,” on one hand protecting private property rights, but on the other, ensuring continued public access to private land. If private landowners decide they no longer want people to hunt, fish and snowmobile on their land, that could harm the state’s economy, Libby Jones said.

While some believe leases are good for the state, lawmakers and others who are studying the issue should keep in mind that leases can be a liability for landowners, said Joe Sanderson of Plum Creek Timber Co., a member of the Maine Woods Coalition Steering Committee.

Leases can be a liability because camp owners often travel the same roads used by logging trucks, and wood harvesting operations around camps have to be done with extra care, Sanderson said. In addition, there is always the concern that a forest fire, started by a camp owner or natural cause, could threaten not only trees but also the people living in the woods.

Since buying more than 900,000 acres of timberland in 1998, much of it around Moosehead Lake, Plum Creek has sold half the leased lots on that land to the leaseholders.

The DuCharmes wish this had happened to them. Shortly after taking over the lease in 1988, they wrote to a succession of landowners inquiring about buying the land outright. It never came to pass and now they dread their final visit to their beloved camp.

Asked if they will continue to come to Maine, DuCharme relayed the question to her husband, who was home for lunch from the private school for emotionally troubled children that they run. She repeated his response into the phone.

“Maine and its people are not the problem,” she said. The DuCharmes own a house in Greenville that they use as a base for summer programs for The Learning Clinic.

“It’s not the lease system that is the problem,” she added. “It’s a wonderful tradition. It’s been misused by people who don’t understand the tradition.”

She warned that Brown might decide to shut down a public campsite also in Big Duck Cove.

Brown has said the campsite will remain available to the public as long as people take good care of it, said Steve Day, who works in the Maine Forest Service Office in Greenville.

One thing is for certain, DuCharme said – she and her husband will never buy a lease again.