LWAI: FIVE YEARS AND MOVING FORWARD
Our 6th summer symposium on June 12, 2010 reviewed the progress toward a renewed working waterfront in Lunenburg. The past five years have seen many positive developments in a process that is difficult, steady, and at the same time, encouraging. We are continuing to make progress, albeit slowly, toward fulfilling our mission of revitalizing our working waterfront.
Some of the Highlights:
- Nova Scotia Community College operates a satellite campus on the waterfront for its Heritage Carpentry Program.
- North Sails, the new owner of the Yacht Shop, continues to operate the chandlery and marina services from this site.
- Foodland is one of the Province’s most successful small “supermarkets” and this business is growing steadily.
- Clearwater Fleet Operations manages a fleet spanning from Argentina to Denmark from their offices on the Lunenburg Waterfront.
- Lunenburg Fish Company purchased one of our buildings, and employs 120 people in the fishery and on the shore.
- Our storefront properties on Montague Street are home to a marine upholstery business and the award-winning Windbag Company of Nova Scotia.
- Lunenburg has been chosen as the best site for the rebuild of Bluenose 2. This project is now in the detailed planning stages; three Lunenburg County firms have been jointly chosen to rebuild this iconic vessel, and the eastern part of our property, basically the Smith & Rhuland shipyard, is the site designated to host this exciting project. More details will be known in just a few weeks.
- The Picton Castle wharf and warehouse; (wharf deemed unsafe after Hurricane Noel) have undergone a major repair and restoration.
- One schooner has been launched (the Kitty Cochrane) and two more are under construction at the Dory Shops. Wooden ships are again being built in Lunenburg! Dorys too!
- The Zwicker Building (known to many as The Forge) has been leased to the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic as relief space for the next few years while the Museum undergoes its own restoration process.
- 50 metres of floating docks were recently installed alongside the wharf at the Zwicker Building. These are slated to become the Visitors’ Dock for the summer of 2010, and will offer accessible floating docks for short term docking and the storage of tenders from visiting yachts moored in the harbour. The site to the west of the Zwicker Building will be landscaped and opened to pedestrians this summer, and will provide access to not only the floating docks but also the wharf on this site. An additional attraction at these new docks will be the Spirit of Canada—Derek Hatfield’s newly-acquired ‘ ECO 60’ ‘round-the-world’ single-handed racing yacht.
The LWAI, by means of the financial support of all our members (annual membership fees), has been able to offer financial support to two important initiatives over the past 12 months:
- We participated in the capital funding of the floating Visitors’ Docks installed last summer.
- We contributed financial support to the forthcoming Lunenburg Waterfront Seafood Festival.
What’s Ahead?
A major review and update of our five-year old Business Plan is our next priority. We expect that this review will plot a course for the next five years and review the currency of the assumptions and policies with which we began this project. We also expect that the review will identify a governance model for the LWAI that will move us beyond the present model—management by the original start-up committee of 12 dedicated volunteers.
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