Holbrook’s Springs to Life

by Beth Brogan, Times Record staff

Brunswick Times Record, April 10, 2009

HARPSWELL — With somewhat warmer weather and occasional glimpses of sun, Holbrook’s Wharf in Cundy’s Harbor is bustling this month as a new snack bar and commercial fishing facility rises out of the rebuilt wharf.

“I’ve threatened to charge a $1 toll with all the traffic,” Bill Mangum said Thursday morning on the wharf. “I think the community is really excited.”

President of Holbrook Community Foundation, Mangum is on-site every day, clearly excited to see the vision he and other board members hoped for about to become a reality.

Barring further torrential rain, the snack bar, commercial pier and nearby Holbrook’s General Store should reopen early next month.

“If you ask Bill, we’ll be open May 1,” said Ed Sparks of Bailey Island, who with Cundy’s Harbor resident George Swallow is building the new snack bar. “But we’re realists. It’ll be May 15.”

Mangum acknowledged that “early May” is the target, with a grand opening scheduled for July. Either way, the new Holbrook’s is a dream come true for members of the foundation that, in 2006, purchased the property with plans to preserve one of the last working waterfront wharves in the area.

Sparks and Swallow started building the new snack bar on March 31, but spent time prior to that refining “plans” that even Mangum acknowledges were simply “very nice drawings.”

“We did not have a set of architectural plans,” he said. “We had concepts. We needed builders who could think on their feet. They’ve been extremely helpful, especially without a detailed set of plans.”

Mangum is delighted with their work, and thrilled that he was able to use local builders.

“That was a very high priority on everything we’ve done,” he said.

Adjacent to the new snack bar, three 20-foot-by-24-foot commercial bays open off a new concrete dock. The concrete is up to a foot thick, Swallow said. The bays will be leased for commercial fishing, one with access directly to the dock.

“Now you can back the truck all the way out to the wharf to unload the fish,” Mangum said.

The concrete dock rests on recycled fiberglass pilings that were a special project of Mangum’s. The previous wood pilings were eaten through by marine worms, Mangum said last year, and new pilings made of the usual pressure-treated wood were only guaranteed for 15 to 20 years.

Mangum expects the new composite pilings to far outlive two decades.

“Obviously, being the frugal person I am, I didn’t want to spend that amount and have to redo it,” Mangum said at the time. So he researched alternatives and found “terrific fiberglass booms off a boom truck,” recycled and donated by an anonymous source. The booms were tested by a North Carolina engineering firm and found to be “extremely strong.”

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