Trust, lobstermen team up to save dock

PORTLAND – Two York lobstermen have teamed up with a local land trust to buy a fishing dock and preserve it as a working waterfront, a deal hailed as a potential model for saving other scenic, working harbors along the Maine coast.

The $710,000 deal to purchase Sewall’s Bridge dock on the south side of the York River and return it to commercial use will help save a bit of York Harbor’s fast disappearing working waterfront.

The dock, used by commercial fishermen for years, previously had been bought by a private homeowner, who rented space to pleasure boaters and had plans to develop a home on the site.

The harbor has already lost three docks in the past two decades to development pressure, including one that was recently sold for more than $1 million, converted into a home and then resold for $2.3 million.

York’s shrinking commercial waterfront mirrors what’s happening all along the coast as developers of high-priced homes buy up properties once used to unload fish and lobsters.

“In York Harbor here, we’ve lost really all but one of our commercial piers, and that’s the one I’m currently renting,” said Mark Sewall, one of the lobstermen who bought the Sewall’s Bridge dock. “All the lobster pounds and all that are gone.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Sewall and Jeff Donnell put up $300,000 to help meet the $710,000 sale price of the rebuilt, 2,290-square-foot dock and about a sixth of an acre of land. The York Land Trust raised another $410,000 to buy the conservation easement that will protect it from development.

The fishermen accepted a value for the easement that was less than fair market value, said Doreen MacGillis, executive director of the York Land Trust.

The Sewall’s Bridge deal is believed to be the first time a land trust has played a role in protecting working waterfront.

“This is definitely breaking new ground, this model of a local land trust partnering with the fishing community to share the rising cost of waterfront property,” said Elizabeth Sheehan, fisheries project director for Coastal Enterprises Inc., a nonprofit community development corporation in Wiscasset.