The town of Harpswell hopes to host a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, May 29, to open the new public boat launch at George J. Mitchell Field, but there were still a few issues to be worked out in the preceding week.
Town Administrator Kristi Eiane explained during a Select Board meeting on Thursday that the town had requested a last-minute change to eliminate a planned metal guardrail along the north side of the boat ramp and causeway.
“We decided that we didn’t want this metal guardrail that had been proposed initially, and so the Select Board asked for an alternative,” Eiane said.
The guardrail would have cost about $25,000 to install and would have given an unnatural feel to the project, town leaders said.
Instead, they plan to have a contractor install 3-foot boulders, spaced 6 feet apart, along the edge of the asphalt on the ramp’s north side at a cost of just $5,350. The south side will be lined with natural vegetation, they said.
Eiane said the recently installed concrete boat ramp also has a raised “lip” that must be removed with heavy equipment or a jackhammer to create a smooth surface for boat trailers. The town is hoping that work can be completed before May 29, as well as “one more item on the float area that we need to address,” she said.
“Those three items need to be done before (we) open the boat launch,” Eiane told the Select Board.
The town is also considering a few changes to Mitchell Field access and traffic patterns, such as keeping the front gate open at all hours to accommodate users of the all-tides boat launch, allowing registered users to park near the launch overnight, and changing traffic patterns to direct launch users along a one-way access road. The Select Board chose to delay those changes at least until the boat launch opens.
“I move that we hold off on the overnight parking plan, and that we begin to have the gate open at least on a trial basis beginning with the ribbon-cutting of the boat launch, whenever that is,” Select Board member David Chipman said. The other two board members agreed.
