The city of Annapolis is closing in on choosing a new tenant for the vacant McNasby's Oyster Co. building in Eastport, and the likely choice is a company that had a business in a failed retail operation on the site several years ago.
City negotiator Jonathan Hodgson is urging the city's aldermen to approve Eastport Seafood Corp.'s bid, which would keep the building as a working seafood processing plant.
He will make his recommendation to the Finance Committee today. The City Council is expected to vote on the lease at its meeting Monday night.
Mr. Hodgson said yesterday that Eastport Seafood's bid is the most lucrative for the city. The company has offered to start paying off a one-year lease immediately, with installments of $2,500 a month.
That's about how much the city spends each month to pay off a debt incurred after the old retail business at McNasby's went sour.
The city bought and renovated the property and a nearby building for $1.7 million in 1987. The Maryland Watermen's Cooperative, which ran a seafood processing plant and a wholesale and retail business on the site, lost money and was mismanaged.
Eventually, the city secured a loan in an attempt to rescue the cooperative. Those efforts failed. In February, the cooperative was forced to close.
Eastport Seafood Corp. was a tenant of the failed seafood cooperative.
Annapolis-based Portland Lobster Co.'s bid isn't as attractive because the company wouldn't pay $2,500 in monthly rent until the final months of a five-year lease, said Mr. Hodgson, a lawyer with Snider, Buck & Migdal.
The city had been negotiating a lease with Portland Lobster and had even approved a preliminary agreement. But the council has expressed reservations about Portland Lobster's wish to defer rent payments for nine months and to make the city continue subsidizing the property for several more years.
Ronald C. Paape, a local entrepreneur, proposes turning the site into a marina with 50 or 60 slips for powerboats. He would rent the property initially and would pay the city with a percentage of the marina's profits. His proposal includes an option to buy the site for $1.5 million.
Mr. Paape's proposal would seem to have little chance of passing, given the council's earlier vote to put a food-processing plant at the McNasby's site.