The Twin Villages Alliance is ready to start raising money for the Damariscotta waterfront restoration project, but needs clear instructions from the town to proceed.
A private capital campaign was the most popular solution to emerge from recent community workshops about how to pay for repairs and improvements to the Damariscotta back parking lot and waterfront area. The board of directors of the nonprofit alliance volunteered to lead the effort.
As soon as the town signs off on a plan, a timeline and a budget, the alliance “is ready to begin this exciting project,” according to a handout from the alliance.
The alliance, once it has the go-ahead from the town, will “establish working groups to look at private and public funding options,” use the findings from the groups to create a plan of action, and “marshal resources and supervise implementation.”
Members of the Twin Villages Alliance Board of Directors met with the Damariscotta Board of Selectmen Jan. 15 to discuss the project.
The town has “a huge opportunity this summer season as far as marketing goes,” Twin Villages Alliance Chairwoman Mary Kate Reny said.
If the town develops a plan for a first phase of the project, the alliance can publicize the campaign and the many part-time residents and visitors of the area “will want to jump in,” Reny said.
“Until we know, from soup to nuts, what this looks like, there won’t be folks who are willing to throw good money after a harebrained or unorganized approach,” Reny said. “I do think there’s a lot of interest and pent-up desire to help Damariscotta do this, but we have to know what we’re doing.”
Damariscotta Board of Selectmen Chairman Josh Pinkham said the board wants to see the project done right.
“I’m 40 years old, I try to drive through the back parking lot once a day, first thing in the morning, and hopefully I’ll be here for another 40 years, and I don’t want to make a mistake where I drive through every day saying ‘Well, you should have done this,’ ” Pinkham said.
The alliance, on its Facebook, describes itself as “a collaboration of businesses, residents, local (government) and place-based entities, working together for the long-term success of the Twin Villages.”
The ideas for the project range from a simple rebuild of the lot to a multimillion-dollar reimagining of the area, complete with a public restroom facility, a riverside boardwalk and a seawall to protect the downtown against flooding.
Barnaby Porter, a downtown businessman and member of the Damariscotta Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee, favors the more ambitious plan.
Porter would like to see the project honor Damariscotta’s history as a shipbuilding community.
“We really have to be inspired and optimistic, and I’ve had a little brainstorm of late that sort of jives with what we’ve talked about by way of the boardwalk,” Porter said at the Jan. 15 meeting.
The town could build the boardwalk to resemble one of the great ships of Damariscotta history, such as the Flying Scud, “arguably the fastest clipper ship ever built;” or the Ocean Herald, perhaps “the biggest ship ever built in Damariscotta,” Porter said.
A boardwalk design incorporating the deck outline and dimensions of either ship, complete with masts, would give visitors a sense of the town’s history. The design would be “interesting, exciting, would celebrate our history and, at the same time, it would be a big part of our boardwalk,” Porter said.
“I can imagine we’d get people’s attention, doing something like that,” he said.
