By Bill Trotter, Bangor Daily News
GOULDSBORO, Maine — A month after she donated 87,000 acres in northern Penobscot County to the National Park Service to create Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, philanthropist Roxanne Quimby has bought an oceanside campground near here that she plans to reopen.
Last week, the Burt’s Bees founder acquired the 113-acre former Ocean Wood Campground in Gouldsboro for an undisclosed price. The bank-owned property was auctioned online by Tranzon Auction Properties, which accepted bids from Sept. 15 until Sept. 22.
Once the campground is reopened, Quimby said, “I think it will take its place as one of the beautiful landscapes of the Schoodic Peninsula. Additionally, it will provide extra camping spots when Schoodic Woods Campground in [Acadia National Park] is filled to capacity, as it was many nights this past summer.”
Quimby said that she bought the property through her real estate management firm, Seaside Partners LLC, which owns about two dozen small, mostly undeveloped properties in Gouldsboro and neighboring Winter Harbor. She declined to say how much she paid for the campground, which has been closed since 2009,
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The land, located on a small peninsula east of Schoodic Loop Road between the villages of Birch Harbor and Bunkers Harbor, has a few buildings on it and an unpaved access road that loops past the old campsites, but the vast majority of it is undeveloped.
“Yes, we did purchase the full 113 acres,” Quimby said. “We have not had the opportunity to assess the condition of the existing infrastructure, so we will wait until we have more information on that before making any decisions as to how to go forward.”
The closure of Ocean Wood seven years ago was one reason the Schoodic Woods Campground was developed nearby on land donated last fall to Acadia National Park. Area officials have said the loss of Ocean Wood, the decommissioning of the Navy base at Schoodic Point in 2002 and the closure of the local Stinson Seafood cannery in 2010 — which was the nation’s last sardine cannery — were major blows to the local economy.
The peninsula’s economic outlook has improved somewhat over the past five years. Acadia’s Schoodic Education and Research Center was established at the former Navy base in 2011, while Maine Fair Trade Lobster has operated the former sardine cannery as a lobster processing plant since 2013.
The identity of the donor of 1,400 acres to Acadia — who spent $29 million to purchase the land and to develop the Schoodic Woods Campground before giving both to the park last November — has not been publicly revealed. Quimby, who summers in Gouldsboro and has owned property on the Schoodic Peninsula since 1998, has said neither she personally nor any of her family’s land-owning entities were involved in that donation.
Ocean Wood closed when the lender foreclosed on its owner, James Brunton. Since then, a few house lots have been subdivided from the Oceanwood parcel, but most of the former campground remains as it was, though it is a bit more weathered and overgrown than it was seven years ago.
Quimby said Wednesday that she bought that property because she has “always appreciated the beauty of the Ocean Wood Campground and was sad to see it close.” She said she hoped for a while that a new owner would come along and reopen it instead of subdividing it into house lots.
Quimby said the timing of the reopening of Ocean Wood will depend on the amount of work needed “to provide a great camping experience for guests.” She said work on physical improvements likely won’t begin until spring and that she will create a publicly accessible Facebook page to keep people apprised of the progress being made.
The campground is on Ocean Wood Way, which intersects with Schoodic Loop Road a few hundred yards from a parking area for a network of biking and hiking trails built last year on the expanded Schoodic portion of Acadia.
Bryan Kanerath, Gouldsboro’s town manager, said Wednesday area officials believe that Acadia’s Centennial and the opening of the Schoodic Woods campground and the associated trails brought more tourists to Gouldsboro and Winter Harbor last summer.
He predicted that reopening of Ocean Wood will also help the local economy. “If she reopens it as a campground, we certainly welcome that,” he said.
This story appears through a partnership with the Bangor Daily News.