Two midcoast nonprofits are teaming up to preserve a historic dairy farm in Rockport — and build new affordable housing on site.
Maine Coast Heritage Trust has owned about 94 acres south of Route 90 for the last 15 years. The Erickson Fields Preserve has walking trails and a community garden, where students have learned to grow produce for nearby food banks.
Recently, the Heritage Trust secured the farm's remaining six acres across the street, where the old farmhouse and dairy barn are located.
When a family member living in the farmhouse passed away a few years ago, Aaron Englander with the Maine Coast Heritage Trust said the nonprofit began to think about how the property could be preserved for community benefit.
Housing, Englander said, emerged as a clear need. The Heritage Trust acquired the six-acre property and plans to preserve five of them. It has donated the remaining acre to the MidCoast Regional Housing Trust, which plans to develop one and two-bedroom apartments.
The housing shortage is being felt throughout the region, said Jonathan Goss, president of the housing trust. Knox County needs nearly 1,300 new homes by the end of the decade.
"Services are being cut back or being lost because of a lack of employees," he said. "Everybody knows someone who either grew up here or had been living here who is not able to live here any longer."
The housing trust plans to renovate the old farmhouse on site for rental housing first, and then construct eight new apartments for working families there later on. Goss said these are families with teachers, public safety officers, nurses and others who earn too much to qualify for subsidized housing, but not enough to afford a median-priced home in the region, which now surpasses $450,000.
Housing development is sometimes pitted against land and environmental conservation efforts. But Englander with the Maine Coast Heritage Trust said this project could serve as a statewide model for balancing those interests.
"[This can] show people that yes, you can conserve wildlife habitat, you can conserve farmland, soils and agricultural know-how, and you can create access to public lands and outdoor educational spaces all in one property," he said.
