Former Navy base at Schoodic a golden egg waiting to hatch

From recent news reports, it appears Acadia National Park has a “white elephant” on its hands: nearly 100 acres and more than 50 buildings tied together with roads, woods and pathways. The package is the former Navy base in Acadia’s scenic Schoodic Section, which has proved to be a conundrum for park planners and officials, who still don’t know what to do with it.

After all this time, planners still are not sure whether their idea of a possible research and education center at Schoodic Point will come to fruition, or whether the park will have any partners in the endeavor.

Just last summer, Acadia National Park took over control of the facility when the Navy closed down its base after 67 years of operation and left the area. But the transfer of the facilities to the park had been anticipated for years -as far back as 1997 when then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen announced the base would close and the properties would revert to the Department of Interior, National Park Service.

Actually, for more than seven years, studies have been under way, surveys have been mailed out, planners have met, meetings and hearings have been held, proposals have been circulated, citizen groups have been formed, tours have been led, delegations have gathered, and talk, talk, and more talk has been swapped. Yet a Jan. 25 headline in this newspaper read “National Park officials weigh Schoodic scenarios.” Seems we read that same headline in mid-August, 1997.

Apparently, things happen gradually; they take time. Park officials can’t say exactly what the scope of the proposed research center may be. They can’t determine how much of the site will be open to the public but they would like funds to “draft an interpretive plan,” which will determine how information about the park is distributed to visitors.

According to Acadia National Park planner John Kelly, their preference is to run the proposed center with a full-time partner (Kelly says the park has received 80 inquiries), but officials also are considering running the facility without help. The third option is doing nothing to develop the site.

What’s being done now? Three maintenance workers and two rangers work at the Schoodic site where there are buildings with a total of more than 204,000 square feet including offices, fire station, medical building, 39-unit housing complex, gymnasium, bowling alley, library, chapel, commissary, public works garage, clubhouse, vacation cabins and more. All located on property worth millions.

Sound like a “white elephant?” Former Gov. Angus King didn’t think so when he and a state entourage toured the facility five years ago. Former Chancellor of the University of Maine System Terrance MacTaggert and UM President Peter Hoff didn’t think so when they visited the site.

In July 1996, a grassroots citizen group called Schoodic Area Futures sponsored a public forum on the subject. Some residents said the facility should be privatized or leased to a viable tenant. Some envisioned an Aspen Institute/Rand Corp. “think-tank” associated with New England universities. Others saw retirement centers such as Parker Ridge in Blue Hill; others hoped interest could build for a consortium of educational institutions. No one believed the underfunded, easygoing Park Service – not exactly known for its proactive approach – would be the best bet. How right they were.

For these many years, most people have viewed this unique Schoodic site, with all its potential, through a different metaphor. White elephant, to the contrary. It’s more like the goose that laid the golden egg.

The problem is, though, this is one egg that won’t hatch merely by sitting on it. If that were the case, the Park Service would be ideal.