BELFAST – The owners of the former Stinson Seafoods sardine canning factory hope to find a developer with a creative approach when they put the property up for auction next month.

“This is an opportunity for midlevel developers to get into a really great piece of property,” Jed Rathband of Portland’s Stone’s Throw Consulting said Tuesday. “This is a great time to do it, and it’s really an important piece of property.”

The 3.6-acre site, with its 1,000 feet of frontage on the Passagassawakeag River and a few crumbling factory buildings, is owned by the investment group Belfast Bay LLC which initially attempted to convert it into a mixed use commercial-residential-marina complex called Wakeag Landing. That $12 million project ran into financial difficulties a year ago, and the property has been on the market since then.

Rathband, who is handling the auction’s promotion, said the partners had been working with Marina Advisory Group of Portland to market the property for $3.1 million and decided to put the parcel up for auction. The auction will be held at 4 p.m. Tuesday, June 24, at the site. Bidders are required to have a $100,000 letter of credit to take part in the auction. The auction will be conducted by Tranzon Auction Properties, an international auctioneer with offices in Portland.

“This is part of their overall strategy to move this property,” Rathband said. “It’s unfortunate that these developers were unable to make it work, but it provides an opportunity for someone else to step in. Obviously, it still will require an extensive investment to make it work.”

Mike Carey of Tranzon Auction Properties said the property was already drawing strong interest from potential buyers. He said his company had already started a “very high-exposure” print and Web-based advertising campaign aimed at state, regional and national markets and would continue to do so up to the day of the auction.

“We’re really excited about this project. There’s a lot of energy around this project, and we’re already getting a lot of calls,” Carey said. “At some level, this is the right time for a sale. Now is the time to sell because there are people out there looking to buy.”

Carey said Belfast Bridge LLC had put a lot of work into the project and that the owners were “energized to pass the ball to somebody else to take it into the end zone.”

Tom Roberts, Belfast Bridge LLC’s point man on the project, spent nearly two years massaging Wakeag Landing through the city’s regulatory system. Roberts made a number of changes in his original plans to comply with city codes and the needs of the community. He even agreed to set aside a portion of the site for a wharf for the city’s commercial fishermen. Anyone purchasing the property would have to complete the dock portion of the project. The city and Roberts entered into a contract rezoning agreement that likely would need to be revised should a new owner surface.

Rathband said the owners decided on a June auction in order to give prospective buyers an opportunity to check out the property and arrange financing.

“It will give people time to cobble together the money needed to get involved in the bidding,” he said.

wgriffin@bangordailynews.net

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