Orphan piano poses transport problem on remote Maine Island

NOTE: This story was originally published in 2002.

FRENCHBORO, Maine - In the film "The Piano" a 19th century Scottish woman, played by actress Holly Hunter, arrives by ship in New Zealand on an isolated beach and is left there with her belongings and her daughter. Her most prized possession, a piano, is left on the shore as her new husband insists it is too cumbersome to carry to their home through the forested, hilly terrain.

Technology has improved since the period portrayed in the film, but a similar problem exists today on Great Duck Island, a 262-acre piece of land located seven miles out to sea off Mount Desert Island.

There, a piano sits unplayed and nearly forgotten in a dilapidated building whose owner wants the structure torn down. A man who owns a seasonal home on Great Duck wants to have the piano but, with no roads connecting the properties and no boat dock on the island, there is no easy way to transport the instrument to his home.

No one lives year round on Great Duck, the vast majority of which is a nature preserve owned by The Nature Conservancy. The island is more than a mile long, about half a mile wide, and has few buildings on it. At the southern tip is a lighthouse owned by College of the Atlantic but operated by the Coast Guard. At the northern end, in an old log cabin built from trees on the island, sits the upright piano.

The conservancy, which owns the building, would like to demolish the structure to make sure it does not pose a threat to the safety of incidental visitors, according to Doug Radziewicz, the conservancy's Down East preserves steward.

"It's a beautiful building," Radziewicz said last week. "It was well put together, but it has deteriorated so much that repairs would be astronomical. It is a hazard right now."

The cabin, and a few smaller ones on the property, were built by George Cloutier, a psychologist who bought the island in 1963, Radziewicz said. Cloutier opened a Gestalt therapy clinic on the island in 1975 and had the piano brought out to Great Duck for the enjoyment of the clinic's visitors. The piano was left behind when Cloutier sold his property to the conservancy in 1985, according to Radziewicz.

Most of the contents of the cabin have been removed but because of its size the piano remains in the building. The conservancy does not want to destroy the piano with the building, Radziewicz said, nor does it want to keep the instrument, he said.

"We have no use for the piano," Radziewicz said. A piano tuner has inspected the instrument and determined that it is in "OK shape," he said, though it could stand to have its finish restored. He added that he does not know who manufactured it or how much it is worth.

A Massachusetts doctor who knew Cloutier and owns 5 acres on Great Duck would like to have the piano, Radziewicz said. Dr. Rich Borofsky declined to be interviewed, but according to Radziewicz the summer resident has the right of first refusal to the instrument.

"We're happy to let him have it," Radziewicz said, "but there's a lot involved in getting the piano from one point to another."

Andrew Peterson, COA's marine superintendent, said dense forest separates Borofsky's house, which is also near the island's northern tip, from the conservancy cabin. The college keeps a tractor with a trailer in tow on the island to help maintain the lighthouse and the other buildings on the 12 acres it owns, Peterson said. Though there are some paths wide enough for the tractor between the conservancy buildings and the college property, no such paths lead to Borofsky's place, he said.

Carrying the piano there by hand would be a formidable task, he added.

"The thing must weigh 600 pounds or so," Peterson said.

Radziewicz said that Leach's storm petrel, one of the protected species of birds that summer on the island, burrows underground to build its nests. Carrying a 600-pound instrument across anything but a well-established path could pose a crushing threat to the birds and cause the people carrying it to trip, he said.

"We would not alter the landscape in order to get the piano from our property to [Borofsky's] property," Radziewicz said. Because of the seasonal presence on the island of the petrels, black guillemots, bald eagles and other birds, the nature preserve on the island is closed to visitors each year from Feb. 15 to Oct. 15, he said.

Peterson, who travels to the island by boat in the summer and hitches rides on a Coast Guard helicopter in the winter, said there is no good place to land a boat on Great Duck.

"The island is too exposed to build those kind of facilities," Peterson said. It might be possible to get the piano onto a barge beach near the conservancy cabin, but there is no place by Borofsky's house where the barge could safely unload the piano, he said.

"You'd have to pick optimal weather [to even try a barge landing on the island]," Peterson said. "There aren't too many days where you could get a wheeled vehicle ashore."

It is more feasible to transport the piano by barge to the mainland than it is to take it to the doctor's house by water, he said. A cargo-capable helicopter is another option, but they tend to be expensive, he added.

Because of the lack of activity on Great Duck in the winter, the piano does not have to be moved anywhere within the next couple of months. One option is for the college to transport the piano in the spring to one of its buildings at the southern tip of the island so that the conservancy can dispose of the cabin, Peterson said.

In the meantime, the parties will continue to work together to determine the piano's fate.

"We shall see," Radziewicz said.

Acadia visits topped 3.96 million in 2024

                           

Acadia National Park had its third-busiest year ever in 2024, according to the National Park Service.

The park had an estimated 3.96 million visits last year, according to park service data. That total topped the 3.88 million visits it had in 2023, but trailed the 3.97 million visits it had in 2022 and the 4 million visits it had in 2021.

Before 2021, the park’s highest number of visits in any calendar year was 3.5 million visits in 2017. Since 2016, when both the park and the National Park Service celebrated their 100th anniversaries, visitation to the coastal national park has soared above 3 million visits per year.

The exception is 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic limited the number of visits to 2.67 million. Since then, the number of people visiting the park has increased even further, as people have avoided crowds more and sought to spend more time outside.

This past October, when conditions in the park were fairly dry and balmy, the park had a record number of visits for that month with nearly 568,000.

The annual crush of visitors, however, has turned into a divisive issue in Bar Harbor, which is the primary service town for park visitors and has a population of only 5,000 people. 

Despite objections from the local tourism industry, Bar Harbor voters have adopted limits on vacation rental properties and twice have decided to greatly reduce the amount of cruise ship traffic that the town draws each summer and fall.

Town officials also are exploring the possibility of imposing limits on hotel development in order to ease the pressure on residents, and on public infrastructure and services. 

Red Lobster - someone else's idea of Maine - declares bankruptcy

The Red Lobster logo is displayed on the door of a restaurant in Yonkers, New York, U.S., on Thursday, July 24, 2014.

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

There are no Red Lobster restaurants in Maine, though there used to be. Several years ago, the Florida-based chain came to grips with the fact that it suburban locations could not compete in Maine with genuine lobster pounds for both scenery and freshness of taste. It closed down restaurants in Bangor and Auburn in 1998.

But it still sought to capitalize in other ways on Maine, which a Red Lobster spokesman once said was the company's "spiritual home." In 2007, the company sought to mimic the casual appeal of Bar Harbor's scenic downtown with new locations it was opening that year. It still offers a "Bar Harbor Lobster Bake" on its menu.

The company buys a lot of Maine lobster, of course, but has struggled to maintain its appeal. Last week, new broke that it ws closing dozens of locations natiowide. Yesterday, the company filed for bankruptcy so it can try to restructure its finances (read the AP story here).

In light of the company's financial straits, I've pasted below a BDN story from November 2007 (I can't find it elsewhere online) about the restaurant's efforts to make it customers feel like they were visiting Bar Harbor when they came through the doors:

A sense of place Red Lobster, one of state's largest crustacean customers, adopts 'Bar Harbor' design

The concept of using Maine imagery to attract visitors or customers is nothing new.

Tourism industry officials, Chambers of Commerce, resort owners and others long have disseminated images of the state's rocky coastline, its forested mountains, its abundant wildlife and its lobster boats to capture the interest of people with some disposable income. L.L. Bean Inc., the Freeport-based retailer, is known worldwide for its catalogs, which are filled with photos of attractive people hiking through rugged and scenic terrain while wearing the company's famous flannel shirts and boots.

Such marketing usually is done either to draw people to Maine or customers to a company that is based here. But there is one large national restaurant chain which has no customers or even employees in Maine that is giving credit for its new design to one of the state's most popular tourist destinations.

Red Lobster, which has more than 680 locations in North America, says Bar Harbor is the "inspiration" for the interior design it has chosen for all of its new restaurants, according to a press release recently issued by the company.

The Red Lobster restaurant nearest to Bar Harbor is more than 350 miles away in Wethersfield, Conn., the only New England state where the chain operates. Red Lobster used to have Maine outlets in Bangor and Auburn but closed them in 1998 without offering a public explanation for shutting them down.

Restaurants with the new design scheme have been opened in Inglewood, Calif., near Cleveland in North Olmsted, Ohio, and most recently in Sherman, Texas.

"We do consider Maine to be our spiritual home," said Wendy Spirduso, director of communications for the Orlando, Fla.-based company. "Bar Harbor is one of [Red Lobster President Kim Lopdrup's] favorite spots in Maine."

According to Spirduso, the new restaurant design does not employ any elements specific to Bar Harbor - diners will not see any re-creations of the local pier or of Cadillac Mountain - but it does try to capture the warm, casual atmosphere of life on the Maine coast without being kitschy.

Photos of the new Texas restaurant provided by Red Lobster show a bar, lobby and dining room with muted colors, finished surfaces in stone and dark wood, and brass details such as light fixtures and coat hooks. The only distinct, recognizable theme elements in the photos are a white, life-saving ring mounted on the wall of the bar and a model boat hull on display in the lobby.

Big buyer of Maine lobster

Red Lobster's parent company, Darden Restaurants Inc., also owns the Olive Garden, Smokey Bones, and Longhorn Steakhouse restaurant chains, among others. Red Lobster had $2.58 billion in sales for 2006, according to the company.

Despite its lack of a formal presence in Maine, Red Lobster does conduct business in the state. It is said to be one of the largest buyers of lobster from Maine, where nearly $300 million worth of the crustaceans were caught in 2006. With about 7,000 licensed lobstermen in a state with fewer than 1.5 million residents, the lobster industry is considered one of the top industries in Maine.

Dane Somers, executive director of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council, said that outside of processors and some supermarket retailers, Red Lobster may be the Maine lobster industry's biggest customer.

"That's probably safe to say, as far as restaurants go," he said. "They are a very large organization. We'd like to think their choice is always [to buy] Maine lobster, but that might not always be true."

Somers' assumption is correct, according to Spirduso. The company buys lobster from other parts of the world, she said, but buys at least 75 percent of its lobster from New England and Atlantic Canada. The bulk of that lobster, she said, comes from Maine.

Spirduso declined to say how much lobster Red Lobster serves at its restaurants, saying it considers such information proprietary. But she did say lobster is the second most popular item on the restaurant's menu, immediately behind shrimp.

As for crediting Bar Harbor for inspiring Red Lobster's new design scheme, Spirduso said Lopdrup has been to the town numerous times and was inspired by the setting and quality of food served at the local restaurants. Lopdrup's affinity for Mount Desert Island, she said, is one of the reasons the company sponsors the MDI Marathon.

Chris Fogg, executive director of the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce, said the concept of using Bar Harbor or Maine imagery as a marketing tool makes sense.

The town has a nationwide reputation for its scenery and authenticity, he said. The fact that it has fantastic views of the coast and at the same time a working waterfront where local fishermen come and go from their boats helps to draw millions of tourists to Mount Desert Island every year.

"In a lot of ways it's a quaint seaside town, not to mention the unbridled beauty of Acadia National Park," Fogg said. "I think it's interesting for people to go down to the pier and to see lobstermen going out for their daily run."

Red Lobster does not have restaurants in Maine because of competitive reasons, according to Spirduso. As the new restaurant design is implemented, she said, the company hopes it will be able to expand, which could mean reopening restaurants in the state down the road.

"We consider Maine to be the prime place for seafood," Spirduso said. "You are blessed with many, many restaurants up there that specialize in lobster."

Red Lobster does not even have any employees in Maine to serve as buyers for the company's seafood, she said, but that also could change, depending on the company's growth. Darden Restaurants has a training center for Olive Garden chefs in Tuscany, Italy, and has considered opening a similar Red Lobster training facility in Maine, she said.

"It is key to us," Spirduso said of Maine's role in supplying the chain with seafood. "It's also key in the inspiration it provides. Maine is important to us, absolutely."

Giving back to Maine

Gary Allen, the MDI Marathon's race director, said Red Lobster sponsors the race because it wants to "give back" to Maine. He said that by not having any restaurants in the state, Red Lobster has very little to gain financially by sponsoring the event.

"They contacted us [about becoming a race sponsor]," Allen said. "They feel a lot of the success of their business is due to Maine."

Allen said that in founding the race six years ago, he set out to create a high-profile, nationally known event, a goal that would be impossible without the backing of a big company such as Red Lobster.

In the past year, the company has used coasters that promote the MDI Marathon at all of its restaurants, Allen said. On average, Red Lobster serves more than 1 million beverages every week, he said.

"You can't buy that kind of advertising," Allen said. "There's no way we could afford them."

Somers said Red Lobster's use of Maine imagery does not simply boil down to a corporation co-opting the Maine "brand" for its own profit. Though Red Lobster does not employ anyone in the state, he said, its support of the lobster industry benefits Maine. And Red Lobster's customers may be inspired to visit Maine if they enjoy their dining experience, he said.

"I think it certainly does help," Somers said. "It promotes the whole lobster industry."

In Bar Harbor, the town manager viewed Red Lobster's public reference to the town much the same way.

Dana Reed said many local companies incorporate the words "Bar Harbor" into their business names but that the town is not likely to consider trademarking its name. An Ohio native, Reed said that before he moved to Maine 21 years ago to take his current job, he had heard about Bar Harbor and had always wanted to visit.

"The more times Bar Harbor gets mentioned out there, the better it is for our tourism business," Reed said. "Imitation is the best form of flattery."