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Cedar Lake Tenants Must Buy or Vacate

September 19, 2007 - Territory 3, Range 9 -- For 20 years, Jimmy Wallace's leased seasonal camp on the shores of Cedar Lake has been a gorgeous place to fish, grow flowers and vegetables, or just plain relax, he said Tuesday.

And Wallace cares for the four-room cottage. Since buying it for about $15,000, the owner of Lenny's Superette of Medway has invested another $10,000 in it as part of an expansion, he says proudly.

"It'sis a beautiful spot, and I have a nice camp out here," Wallace said Tuesday.

But that might change soon.

Wallace is among the owners of 78 camps located on half acre to 1 3/4 acre plots who are being forced by the landowners to either buy their lot soon or face eviction when their leases run out in about a year, he and other leaseholders say.

The owners of the lake lands, which include the Webber family and four other entities, have decided to sell their lands to private owners, said Don White, president of Prentiss and Carlisle, the Bangor-based forest resource management company that manages the land.

"The majority of them decided it was time to sell, and they chose this time to do it," White said Tuesday. "There's a myriad of reasons why."

Although the offers made to leaseholders vary individually, the owners generally are seeking about $83,500 per lot, minus a 5%, 60 day discount, from the leaseholders, Wallace said.

The discount and first-purchase option, which the landowners were not required to offer, lasts until early December. The leaseholders have 90 days to decide, although many leaseholders won't need that long, White said.

"For the people who have been long-term lessees, the discount offer seemed like the right thing to do," White said. "Many of these people have been after us for 20 years. They have wanted very badly to buy these lots. Some of these people have $150,000 houses on one-year lease lots."

"I almost never see them not buy. Even if they can't afford to buy, they do buy it and then sell it to somebody else for more," he added. "It's a financial win for these guys. It's a very rare occasion when people don't buy."

Eugene Conlogue, town manager of Millinocket, which is about 10 miles northeast of the two-mile-long lake, said the sales -- probably the first large-scale lakefront property exchanges in his area in years -- could really help revitalize the Katahdin region's economy, where unemployment typically runs about twice the state average.

Construction company work likely will increase dramatically as leaseholders or others buy the camps and improve them, Conlogue said. The land sales will have a trickle-down effect on the local economy, with construction companies, related tradesmen and suppliers of their raw materials among the first benefactors, he pointed out.

"It's going to have a really good ripple effect on the construction market," Connolly said, "and construction is one of the best bangs for the buck you can get in a local economy."

That's an opinion shared by Millinocket town Council or David Cyr, a cement contractor who said last year that with the Millinocket area's lakefront property still mostly leased, Katahdin contractors were denied the steady diet of work that helped Lincoln to flourish.

Land sales around Lincoln's 14 ponds and lakes led to a record-setting year of building permits issued in 2006, town officials have said.

That impact can take months, if not years, to dissipate, as construction work is seasonal and takes time. Lincoln's lakefront land sales also increased the affluence of the town's population, with some retirees and other landowners coming from as far away as Virginia, town officials have said.

But Wallace sees an ugly downside to the $83,500 sales offer: greed.

"It's a family thing up here. Everybody loves where they are. Nobody wants to sell their camp, or do anything, but we are being forced to buy our camps. Forced," Wallace said. "I will buy mine, there's no doubt about it, but I am not crazy about it."

"It's all about greed," he added. "We, the leaseholders, have been paying them $800 a year forever. They bought this land for 25 cents an acre in the early 1900s. It's ridiculous. They are making a pretty good deal for themselves. They are not doing anything wrong, but the owners have been very greedy."

Some leaseholders, including elderly folks on fixed incomes, will be forced to vacate their camps because they can't afford them, Wallace said.

"It's buy or get out. There's no compassion," he said.

White said he recognized that for many Mainers, an era of inexpensive leased land is coming to a close, but landowners should not suffer because of it, especially after facing years of steadily increasing taxation on shorefront property.

"There are some people who have had a good deal for a very long time. The fact that some of them are not able to buy the land doesn't change what it's worth," White said. "We are trying every way we can to make it so that they are able to buy it, but we can't reduce the value of what the lots are worth."

"The taxes are getting so onerous that the landowners almost have to sell," he added.

This article first appeared in the Bangor Daily News, September 12, 2007.


Lakes: Cedar Lake
Regions: Katahdin


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