BUCKSPORT, Maine — The company that owns the former Verso Paper mill site expects to close deals within 60 days to sell portions of the 250-acre site for a proposed $250 million salmon farm and a Maine Maritime Academy training annex.
A representative of site owner American Iron and Metal said that Whole Oceans, which has proposed the salmon farm, and the academy were finishing their due diligence on their separate deals at a good pace. His statement came after a Planning Board meeting Tuesday night in which members took a series of unanimous votes to move a boundary line on a zoning map to cut an abandoned smokestack out of the plot of land MMA plans to buy.
Whole Oceans plans to build a $250 million salmon farm that will create 50 jobs in its first phase, during which the company expects to invest $75 million. The annex the academy plans is expected to eventually draw 2,400 MMA students, mostly professional mariners, annually to this Hancock County town of 4,900.
Construction of both is expected to start this year, once the sales are completed. The two enterprises are expected to galvanize a Bucksport-area economy hammered by the mill’s closure in late 2014.
[Subscribe to our free weekly Hancock County newsletter]
“I think both are approximately two months out,” said Jeff McGlin, a vice president at AIM subsidiary AIM Development USA, the town’s top taxpayer.
The zone change “is one of the necessary steps, and there are other due diligence items, but I think they are both on track to close,” he added.
The zone change vote carries a 45-day appeal period, and AIM and the buyers are still working to finalize the sale documents and the easements that will allow Whole Oceans and the academy to run utilities through the 250-acre site, said Michael Lane, an attorney from Preti Flaherty who represented AIM before the board Tuesday.
“We’re working through the purchase,” McGlin said.
The academy is expected to submit a site plan proposal for the annex to the town this week that the board will review in a special meeting on April 16.
[Maine lands second major salmon farm, this time at shuttered paper mill]
AIM Development, a subsidiary of a Canadian scrap metal firm, bought the mill site along the Penobscot River at 2 River Road, and several buildings at 3 River Road — which is across the street — as part of a $58 million purchase in 2015.
In previous meetings, the board had approved the zoning and subdivision of the mill site to separate land sought by MMA, Whole Oceans and Bucksport United Methodist Church, which recently purchased a former mill fitness center and credit union building at 3 River Road.
AIM has another element of the site it is trying to repurpose — what it calls the port development plot. It’s a 40-foot-deep berth in the Penobscot River that can accommodate an 800-foot-long ship. The mill used it to ship paper. It’s presently used only to accept shipments of liquid fuel for a local heating-oil company, McGlin said.
Bucksport Generation LLC, an AIM subsidiary, also owns a power plant at 2 River Road, said Jeffrey Hammond, Bucksport’s code enforcement officer.
Since the fall, the company has stepped up demolition on the site along the river to prepare for the land sales. AIM is also seeking a reduction in the taxable value of the site’s gas-powered electrical generator from about $60 million to $42 million. At Bucksport’s current property tax rate, the generator’s annual tax bill would drop by about $300,000 if the town approves the request.