March 2016 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 5. Southern Maine Marine Completes New Facility
ARUNDEL – For more than three decades, I have been running around the Coast of Maine and the transition has been interest- ing, especially in the marine businesses. Many of us aged together while watching as some pass out of the business by choice and other times not. In any business it is fascinat- ing to see how a business is passed on. Some are sold, but others are passed on to the next generation. Recently I have noted a number of marine businesses in Maine where the younger generation has taken an interest. Many times this rejuvenates the passion and the business is expanded and I noticed this happening at Southern Maine Marine in Arundel as they have recently built storage buildings and now a new building has been fi nished right on Route 1.
Anyone who is a power boater in south- ern Maine knows owner Paul Lariviere. For over four decades he has built his business and reputation servicing the regular power- boater and some very high-end clientele. His renewed passion came when his daughter, Kelly Page, came to work for him several years ago. Paul created a plan to grow the business so he could pass it onto his daughter and the newest building is part of that plan. They had outgrown the old building, which had a showroom and offi ces. The ar- chitectural plans for a 100 x 64 foot building were started in 2014. They designed it to house retail items, parts, a clean rigging shop and offi ces. When asked if it was too small already, Paul said, “Yes, I would have gone bigger. I wanted to go 72 x 125, but when I went to the Town of Arundel they wouldn’t give me a variance to go 12 feet either way because of my setbacks on my property. I couldn’t go any closer to the old building because we were less than two feet away when we built it.”
Late last spring, they broke ground and they moved in just before Christmas. Was there sentimental value left for the old building? Paul was more than happy it was gone and even had a video of it coming down at the end of an excavator.
Paul grew up in Biddeford not far from where the Marblehead Boat Company was. That burned in 1963 and Paul remembered that, saying, “We were coming back from Scarborough. My father was driving a 1959 Dodge Seneca coming across the Scarbor- ough marsh when we saw the smoke. My father joked that the house was on fi re. Little did we know all of the woods across the street from our house was burning. The embers from the Marblehead Boat Yard were coming down a mile away and people were on top of their roofs putting the fi res out with hoses.”
Paul never worked there, but he remem- bers some of the history and the boats they
produced. “At that time the Browns were running it and Earl Rumery was the foreman. I think it was the Browns that closed up shop and Earl bought all of their stuff and moved to where Rumery’s Boat Yard is located now. That used to be CMP’s transformer company.”
When asked about the Marblehead Boat models, Paul said, “They had the Marble- head 23, the 30 foot Arundel, the 36 foot Arundel. They also built custom one offs on top of that.”
Paul went to work at Rumery’s Boat
Yard in 1973. He said, “We were still build- ing wooden boats and I was steaming ribs and running planks with the crew. They had like one and a half boats going all the time and they always had work. They were building the Eldridge-McInnis designed Grand Banks. Then we fi nished off several Bruno Stillmans, the 42 footers. Some were sportfi sh and then a couple were built as commercial boats. We also did a bunch of Down East boats. I became part of this in- dustry right between the wood life and the fi berglass life.”
“I stayed at Rumery’s Boat Yard from 1973 till 1979,” continued Paul. “In 1979, Saco River Marine, which was where the old Biddeford & Saco coal buildings were, I went to work there as a mechanic. I worked there from 1979 and in the spring of 1981 left and went down the street and started working out of my garage. I had four former customers fi nd me two days after I left and I never looked back.”
While he was working on his own, his brother Mark hooked him up with Jabsco pumps because the company he was work- ing for always was needing them rebuilt. It was not long before Paul was so busy he needed a place to operate out of. Just down the road from his present location he rented a two car garage and not long after, April 1985, he and his brother became partners. In a year and a half they had already outgrown this location so they started looking for another place and that is how they came to their present location, which is eight acres on Route 1. Besides the Lindell home, they put up a workshop. Paul said, “My brother and I put that up in the winter of ‘86/87. This was all woods. We cut some of the trees down and then a friend let me borrow a Caterpillar D4. We then went to Kittery and took down an old retail building. We unscrewed all of the tin and all of the pieces were numbered. We then borrowed a low bed and hauled it all back here.”
For years they stored the boats outside. When Mark decided to leave the business in 2009, Paul explained, “My wife and I decided to buy him out and he and I came to an agreement. I looked at what other people
The crew of Southern Maine Marine (from left to right): Rob Oleson, Fred Hamilton, Jordon Brown, Wade Goldthwait, Ben Nunan, Paul Lariviere, Kelly Page and Preston Lariviere.
were doing with inside storage and that gave people a lot of work.”
It was at this point that Kelly joined the
company, adding, “He approached me and said ‘I need help to run the business.’ I was working as a secretary at Orthopedic Sur- gery Associates and at that time the hospital was buying everything out in this area and it wasn’t the business I had been working for. I was really looking to do something else and the timing was perfect so I came on in January 2009.”
There had been a fi re in the work shop do to arson and Paul and the crew had been working in a metal framed building covered with shrink wrap and no insulation for seven years. In 2010, they replaced that building with one that was 38 x 76 feet and that is where all the service work is done. This was followed by two storage buildings, the last one going up in 2014.
Even with the new building’s work area, they need to add another work shop, which
is already in the planning stage. This build- ing will be 100 x 80 feet and they hope to have it completed by the end of the summer of 2017. After that they plan to put up one more storage building, hopefully in 2018 or 2019. At that point they are out of land for expansion unless the purchase more. If running this business is not enough, Paul is also the harbor master for Biddeford, which he has done since 1979.
Southern Maine Marine has a total of eight people employed and would love to hire another certifi ed technician. They still have a lot of winter work to do and that is not counting the spring commissioning work. Paul is more than pleased that his daughter is interested in the business say- ing, “She has got the business’s back.” Kelly added, “Sometimes it is challenging working with your family, but it is better than working with anybody else, and I get to spend every day with my dad.”
Bring your boat to New England’s most capable yacht yard for the care she deserves. Repairs, refi ts, storage and dockage available for vessels up to 200 feet and 480 tons.
Belfast,Maine 207-930-3740
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