Officials Eye Parking Solutions At Rock Harbor

ORLEANS – Young’s Fish Market has reopened its doors. So too has Cap’t Cass Rock Harbor Seafood, much to the delight of residents and visitors who have been clamoring for the fabled institution’s reopening for years.

 All of this has given Rock Harbor a significant boost in popularity. But as work continues on finishing the parking lot at the neighboring commercial bulkhead, town officials say that measures need to be taken to preserve at least some of the parking in the small lot for commercial fishing operations. 

 The select board on July 23 voted to give Harbormaster and Natural Resources Manager Nate Sears the flexibility he needs to manage parking in the lot, which has approximately 25 spaces. In the short term, he told the board he anticipates reserving at least one space for local vendors to park and pick up their daily catch from fishermen. He said with the reopening of the market and the restaurant, there have been occasions where vendors had nowhere to park to pick up their catch at night.

 “It’s actually incredible,” he said after last week’s meeting. “It doesn’t matter what time of day. I was down there all afternoon and it might as well have been dinner time with the (number of) people going to the restaurant and the fish market. And it’s only frustrating for the commercial fishermen when they’ve worked a 12-hour day and the people who are coming to buy from them can’t get anywhere near them.”

Sears didn’t rule out marking off as many as 10 spaces “on the extreme end” if needed, depending on how busy the area is for the remainder of the summer.

 “I still need to monitor it, but I need to come away from here being able to play any card I need to play as needed,” he told the board last week.

 With that, Sears also said that efforts will be made to direct visitors to the harbor’s main parking lot just up the road. A sign directing people to free parking in the larger lot is posted to fencing outside of the fish market.

 “If patrons need to walk 50 yards down the road to get a parking spot, that’s reasonable,” said Mark Mathison of the select board, who noted that the lot is town property.

 The parking lot reconstruction is part of the overall $9 million commercial bulkhead renovation at the harbor. Voters at last year’s annual town meeting authorized the funding for the project, which includes construction of a new bulkhead with end-in docking for commercial fishing boats, a new pier, the installation of a hoist system for offloading catch, seawall restabilization, new docking for the harbor's charter fleet and construction of a public viewing area.

 Much of that work has been completed. Fishermen have access to end-in docking, as well as water, electricity and fuel, Sears said. 

 “It’s functional, they’re embracing it,” he said. “It’s safe. Some of these folks have never had a back-in slip before. They can see the vision of what it’s going to look like in its final stages.”

 But there’s still stormwater and other infrastructure work needed in the parking lot, which Sears said may not be ready for final paving and striping until the spring. Until then, measures will be taken as needed to manage the use of the small lot, he said.

 “How do you come up with long-term solutions when you’re still dealing with construction? We’re trying to just make sure it’s a safe place for the fishermen to be able to function out of there.”

 The small lot has always been open to some level of public use. But Sears said it remains to be seen how many spaces will ultimately be open to the public when work in the parking lot is completed.

 “We’ve never had to deal with that level of demand in that parking lot before,” he said.

 Select Board Chair Kevin Galligan also stressed the need to steer parking away from the rear of the bulkhead, an area he said is “fragile” and unsafe for motorists.

 “The message on this, the takeaway, should be ‘We are all good,’” Galligan said of the state of the bulkhead project. “We’re just working out the kinks.”