There is only so much one can glean from a PDF file, and so the revised plans for Marion’s proposed Marine Center to house the harbormaster and staff took on a dimension closer to real life on Saturday morning when Harbormaster Isaac Perry and Marine Resources Commission Chair Vin Malkoski conducted an informal meeting with interested citizens at Island Wharf.
Suggested by Select Board member John Waterman, and billed as an Open House, those in attendance including MRC members Greg Houdelette, Toby Burr, Eiv Strand, Michael Moore, and Peter Borsari, gathered in the outdoor picnic-style area underneath the existing 15-foot square where Perry, Deputy Harbormaster Adam Murphy, and Assistant Harbormaster David Wilson perform their duties separated by plexiglass.
Perry says the full-time staff gets used to the cramped quarters, but smiled when he recalled, “We ordered a pizza, but we had no place we could put it down.”
The real challenge occurs when someone from the outside needs to conduct business, fill out forms, or log information. In such a case, one of the three full-time staffers must vacate his desk to accommodate the public. Administrative Assistant Donna Hemphill, meanwhile, works out of the Town House, and that says nothing of the half-dozen summer employees.
Outside, Perry and Malkoski conducted a show-and-tell, walking to certain points in the parking lot to demonstrate for the sake of real-life perspective where exactly the footprint for the proposed Marine Center will rest.
While the revised Marine Center design takes away some of the decking that residents do not want blocking their view of the harbor, Perry said the dedicated harbor space in the revised design was only reduced from 2,000 square feet to 1,800.
The one, non-negotiable measurement, explained Perry, is the height, which in order to meet the 19-foot elevation requirement as established by FEMA, will reach close to the town’s 35-foot maximum allowed for new structures. The good news, Perry pointed out, is that from the harbor, a building at that height blends in with the horizon.
Perry said it would take $1 million just to achieve the required elevation aspect of the $2.5 million project, which would be based on Seaport Economic Council grant funding and necessitating a $500,000 share generated by the town.
“We need the grant money to do it, that’s the reality,” he told attendees.
So far, Marion is approved for slightly more than $300,000 in a grant program that will continue in phases.
In describing the current storage situation, Malkoski pointed to the lower floor and said, “We’re not supposed to have any permanent installations,” a situation he said the department is trying to get away from.
Perry noted that the sale of the former town property at Atlantis Drive has further confined marine-related storage and said that the containers used by the Council on Aging will be replaced by permanent storage facilities at the Cushing Community Center, potentially making the containers available to the harbormaster. In the event of a storm, the plan now includes loading items onto a truck to be hauled away from the wharf. A container on site would shorten the steps.
“There’s a lot of inefficiency that we’re trying to clean up,” said Perry, who estimates under ideal circumstances that a new facility would not be operational until late 2022 at the earliest.
At the May 17 MRC meeting at the Music Hall, Borsari urged Perry and Deputy Harbormaster Adam Murphy to “make sure you are happy with (the new facility)…. It’s your one and only opportunity for it. We need to do it right.”
Perry estimated that 36 people attended Saturday morning’s May 15 information session at Island Wharf.
Recapping the storage situation in his report, he said the department still intends to be fully out of Atlantis Drive by June. “We’ve got a little bit of work to do there. A lot of the gear is fully deployed, so there’s not a lot,” he said. “But the containers are not a great solution … The company that owns them, once they have material in them, they will not move them.”
He prefers a “utility-type trailer” and has gotten a couple of quotes under $10,000, so it would not be a capital project.
“If we do get this building and we do have storage, we can park the trailers underneath and, in the event of a storm, we can just haul them out of there,” he said.
Perry called the filing of the $300,000 grant “the first big bite,” and anticipates informal meetings over the summer. Shareholders on the Seaport Economic Council include the lieutenant governor and members of Mass Maritime Academy. Those meetings, he said, are open to the public, and estimated 250 in attendance at the last one he went to. “When we get a little closer (to the next meeting), we’ll certainly put it out to the group,” he said.
The MRC’s Commercial Moorings Subcommittee has scheduled a meeting for Thursday, May 27, at 6:00 pm at the Music Hall. Malkoski, Moore, and Burr are on the subcommittee, but the meeting has been advertised so other MRC members may attend.
At Wings Cove, 28 people are on a waiting list for moorings with 25 moorings available, and Deputy Harbormaster Adam Murphy confirmed that there are 89 people waiting for moorings. With 1,414 moorings and 1,300 spoken for, there are approximately 100 mooring permits available.
Perry said an evaluation of the moorings and any resultant cleanup will then happen at Hammetts Cove. “Eventually we’ll go through all the coves,” he said. “It’s time to get that project going because we missed out on a whole year. It’s going to make a lot of people happy and bump up the numbers in the Waterways Account.”
The MRC’s Shellfish Subcommittee is scheduled to meet on Thursday, June 3, at 6:00 pm.
On Sunday morning, May 16, a private boat capsized in Marion Harbor, said Perry, most likely because it anchored off the stern. Six people on the boat were quickly brought to safety. The Marion Fire Department was supported by Wareham among other towns quick to assist. There were no fuel leaks.
Malkoski and Perry desire a meeting with Town Accountant Judy Mooney to go over their department’s financials.
The next meeting of the MRC is scheduled for Monday, June 21, at 7:00 pm.
Marion Marine Resources Commission
By Mick Colageo