GLOUCESTER, Mass. — June 23, 2014 — Shrinking government catch quotas — particularly on haddock and cod — have decimated much of the Gloucester fleet, leaving key support businesses such as Cape Pond Ice struggling to survive. Scott Memhard stood on the dock at Cape Pond Ice, the iconic icehouse his family owns, and looked out at Gloucester’s port, which was dead on this afternoon.
There was absolutely no movement among Gloucester’s famous fishing fleet.
“They used to be lined up waiting to ice up,” Memhard said of the boats that have filled their holds with Cape Pond Ice for 166 years to keep their catch cold at sea.
“Yesterday, we had one boat.” He stepped back inside a small office and checked the invoices. “Today, we haven’t had any.”
But as he stood there, looking out at the scenic harbor, Memhard was more optimistic about the future of Cape Pond Ice than he has been in a long time, just a year after he was ready to throw in the towel. Now, he says, he’s been “thrown a life preserver.”
Shrinking government catch quotas — particularly on haddock and cod — have decimated much of the Gloucester fleet, leaving key support businesses such as Cape Pond Ice struggling to survive. Last year, Memhard put the massive waterfront property on the market and was planning to walk away from the business that he and his father bought in 1983. The company’s famous “Coolest Guys Around” T-shirts — which are to Cape Ann what Black Dog T-shirts are to Martha’s Vineyard — looked like they would become a thing of the past.
But thanks to some creative debt refinancing, political wrangling, and cautious flexibility from state regulators, Memhard is standing on a pier of opportunity, one that many in Gloucester see as a step into its future, where the port will preserve Gloucester’s ability to fish while dealing with the reality that many of its core support businesses are unable to survive on fishing alone.
Memhard was able to refinance his debt with help from MassDevelopment, a state authority that aids business development, but he was still left with a major catch.
Cape Pond Ice, like most of the large businesses that make up the fishing infrastructure, is inside a zone called the Designated Port Area, defined by a 1978 state statute that dictates how certain marine-industrial properties can be used. In short, the goal is to preserve important parcels for the infrastructure necessary to support commercial fishing — the icehouses and mechanics and welders and processing plants and auction houses that keep the fleet running — by requiring that 50 percent of any parcel be used for that mission.
The problem is that fishing-related orders now account for just 10-12 percent of Cape Pond Ice’s business, down from 80 percent in the 1980s.