PORT CLYDE, Maine — Linda Bean, heir to the L.L. Bean family fortune, has more plans in the works for this scenic seaside village, and not all the local residents are happy about it.
Bean, who owns a home in Port Clyde along with the local general store and other properties, is proposing to build a small museum to honor the Wyeth family of artists. Some people who live near the proposed site, however, say the residential neighborhood is not suitable for the type of development Bean has in mind.
The proposed Wyeth Orientation Center, envisioned as a Wyeth family gallery and educational center, would be a 1,500 square-foot, 1.5-story building on less than half an acre of land at the intersection of Horse Point Road and Raspberry Lane, according to the project application filed with the town of St. George.
The center would serve as an introduction and ode to the multigenerational artists of the Wyeth family, who had a summer home and art studio nearby. The center would include a reading room, a gallery, as well as a room with a projector, where films could be screened, according the floor plan.
Bean, who did not respond this week to calls or emails, could be granted a building permit as early as next month. The proposal will be vetted by the local planning board for a second time March 14.
Chris Chadwick, his wife, Emily, and their infant daughter live directly across the street from the site proposed to house the Wyeth Center, at 19 Horse Point Road. Their house was Chadwick’s grandmother’s home, and the house across the street — which Bean now owns and is slated to be razed for the project — was owned for years by his uncle, who used to dry fish on the clothesline and heat his house with a woodstove.
All three buildings that sit on the property at 20 Horse Point Road property would be demolished to make way for the new structure and gravel parking lot. The property is bordered on all four sides by residential homes.
“We do not see eye to eye,” Chadwick said Friday of Bean and her proposal
Chadwick and his wife are among more than 70 local residents and property owners who have signed a letter of complaint to the town about the project.
“She’s like the unpopular new girl who comes to school and instead of buying everyone lunch and sodas, she buys houses from them at more than market value,” which drives up market costs, making it more prohibitive for residents to purchase property and live in the area, Chadwick said.
In addition to the general store, Bean’s business holdings include the Port Kitchen restaurant inside the store and the wharf on which it sits, an existing Wyeth art gallery on the second floor and the outdoor restaurant in back, the Dip Net. Bean also owns the nearby Barn Cafe, the Seaside Inn, the Corner Store in nearby Tenants Harbor, and the general store in Tenants Harbor, which is for sale.
Horse Point Road stems off the village’s main thoroughfare, Port Clyde Road, the intersection of which is a five-minute walk to the general store, and extends for about a mile before ending at Hupper Point.
Chadwick, 36, a scallop fisherman and lobsterman who also owns the Black Harpoon tavern with his wife, said Bean’s heaping haul of local businesses and properties has put the village in a “quagmire.”
Larry Bailey, who also lives off Horse Point Road and has known Bean for 20 years, also opposes the project, but he does not believe she should be painted as the village antagonist.
“She has done a remarkable amount of good things for Port Clyde,” Bailey said. “She’s kept businesses open that otherwise would have closed, [and] she has improved the infrastructure tremendously.”
Bailey’s opposition isn’t about the project itself, he said, but its location “in a residential neighborhood” where there is nothing but houses.
“If she decides to abandon this project in 5 to 10 years, what’s going to go into that building?” he said. It’s an “inappropriate development for this small, two-lane, no-sidewalk road. I think it’s a great idea, just the wrong location.”
Even so, Chadwick said, “what’s the end goal? She’s just like the little kid that plays with a toy, and now that toy is Port Clyde.”
The controversy in Port Clyde is the latest to shadow Bean, a conservative Republican who ran twice unsuccessfully for Congress in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In January, she made national headlines after it became known that she had exceeded donation limits when she gave $30,000 to the Make America Great Again LLC Super PAC in support of Donald Trump. The donation drew the attention of the Federal Election Commission, which limits annual individual donations to traditional PACs to $5,000.
The donation drew the ire of Grab Your Wallet, an anti-Trump group that advocates for boycotting retail businesses that sell Trump products, which called for a boycott of L.L. Bean unless Linda Bean was removed from the company’s board of directors.
Aside from the businesses in Port Clyde, Bean also owns Linda Bean’s Perfect Maine, a vacation rental and retail seafood business.