PORT CLYDE, Maine — June 17, 2013 — Linda Bean’s path to becoming one of the major players in the state’s lobster industry came late in life.“I was 67 at the time and going through a divorce,” Bean said about her decision to try a new career in the lobster industry. “This gave me a new lease on life.”
Bean, who is the granddaughter of L.L.Bean’s founder, had a home in Port Clyde and about a quarter mile away was the Port Clyde General Store, the Dip Net restaurant, and down the road, the Bay Lobster wharf where lobstermen unloaded their catch.
She knew the owners of the Bay Lobster buying station and one of them, Nancy Albano, called her and asked if she would be interested in acquiring the lobster business.
Bean wasn’t immediately sold on the idea.
“I had never been in that type of business,” she said. “I had been a licensed real estate broker and invested in some vacation properties but that was the extent of it.”
David and Nancy Albano convinced her by agreeing to stay on for a year to show her how the business operates through an entire year’s cycle.
In February 2007, she purchased the Bay Lobster buying station for $1.6 million. In May 2007, she purchased Port Clyde’s general store and restaurant, both anchor businesses in this coastal village, for $1.1 million. Those were the first of what has become many acquisitions in the Midcoast for Bean.
She said the privilege of being one of the L.L.Bean heirs has given her the opportunity to make the investment in the Maine lobster industry.
Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News