Palom Aquaculture LLC is offering its 40.47-acre coastal property at Corea Road, Gouldsboro, Maine for acquisition. The site — a former U.S. Navy communications station (NSGA Winter Harbor) subdivided into four lots — carries active, transferable permits from three regulatory bodies for recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) operations. For an operator ready to build, this acquisition converts years of permitting risk into a defined construction project on a site that is already approved.
Active, transferable permits from three agencies — Maine DEP discharge permitting, Maine DMR production approval, and a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit currently in its third renewal review. These permits support salmonid stock at up to 1,000 metric tons; the Town of Gouldsboro's ordinance currently limits finfish production at this site to 500 metric tons annually (exact ordinance units to be confirmed with the Town — see Permits page). Modifying an existing, active permit is a more straightforward regulatory path than a new application starting from zero.
40.47 acres across four subdivided lots. The site can be operated as a single campus or developed in phases. At closing, a buyer receives the entire consolidated site — not a shared or multi-tenant arrangement. The former antenna array footprint is a large, flat, crushed-granite base suited to industrial construction. Prospect Harbor provides cold, clean seawater with a 12-foot tidal range. The site is bordered on three sides by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service land.
65,000+ SF of existing structures — Building 85 (~20,000 SF), the Lot 4 building (~45,000 SF per Gouldsboro town hall property card), and secondary Building 153. All buildings require extensive renovation, including roof replacement.
Three-phase power at Corea Road, served by Versant Power (BHD territory) — infrastructure many comparable Maine coastal sites lack. The site also supports a planned 1 MW solar array: engineered and quoted at $3,000,000 installed, plus an estimated $250,000 for grid interconnection. This array has not been built. See the Power & Solar page for the full ROI analysis.
Deeded 30-foot right-of-way easements to Prospect Harbor. Seawater intake is permitted at approximately 50-foot depth; a discharge easement is also in place. This infrastructure has not yet been constructed — preliminary estimate is approximately $1.5 million.
A second deeded right-of-way runs from Lot 4 to the ocean. This second easement is not covered by the site's existing DEP, DMR, or ACOE permits; any use of it would need its own separate permitting process.
Obtaining RAS permits in Maine is a multi-year process involving public hearings, agency review, and legal exposure to adjacent-landowner challenges. Palom spent four years working through local, state, and federal approvals before receiving its first permits; the Army Corps permit alone has been through three renewal cycles.
An operator acquiring these permits inherits that regulatory history rather than repeating it — permit modifications for an existing, active facility generally follow a faster track than a new application.
Gouldsboro's ordinance currently limits finfish production at this site to 500 metric tons annually. This is a municipal limit, not a permit limit — state and federal permits already support up to 1,000 metric tons of salmonid production, so raising production to that level needs only Town of Gouldsboro approval, not new state or federal permitting. A different finfish species (e.g., flatfish) would need a state/federal permit modification and would likely remain subject to the town's cap, since it applies across finfish species rather than to salmonid alone. See the Permits page for the full explanation.
Stable-temperature seawater, an engineered solar power plan, and active RAS permits support precision aquaculture — tightly controlled water chemistry, temperature, and power that let an operator manage fish health directly rather than absorb whatever conditions open water or a constrained power budget provide. See the Fish Health & Energy page for the operating mechanism, and industry mortality benchmarks from a comparable land-based operator.
The property sits in the same coastal Maine cold-water aquaculture corridor as two federal and university research facilities in Franklin, Maine — the USDA Agricultural Research Service's National Cold Water Marine Aquaculture Center (NCWMAC) and the University of Maine's Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research (CCAR), roughly 20 miles away. Palom has no formal affiliation with either.
A commercial seafood processing facility with deep-water pier access operates in Prospect Harbor, within the same harbor watershed as this site. It includes large-scale processing and warehousing space and a pier that can accommodate vessels at low tide. Palom has no arrangement, understanding, or agreement of any kind with this facility. This is regional context only, not a confirmed or available resource.
Bill Keleher, President of Kennebec River Biosciences, supports Palom on this project. He brings aquaculture operations expertise and established relationships in the Gouldsboro community. Competitive Energy Services (CES), a Portland, Maine energy procurement firm, also supports Palom, covering utility negotiations and interconnection guidance with Versant Power. Neither is under formal contract with Palom; both are available for an initial conversation with qualified buyers at no cost.
Securing these permits took four years. When Palom's original investors withdrew, the partners chose to maintain and consolidate the asset rather than abandon it. What a buyer acquires today is the result of that work: a consolidated, permitted site that few comparable coastal parcels can match.
© 2026 Palom Aquaculture LLC. All buildings require major renovation including roof replacement. Seawater infrastructure not yet constructed (~$1.5M preliminary estimate). Gouldsboro land use ordinance currently caps finfish production at 500 tons annually. A formal appraisal from a Maine commercial/aquaculture specialist is recommended before finalizing transaction terms.