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MEMBERTOU, N.S. — As Membertou went looking to purchase a new fishing boat, a potential business venture for the First Nations community presented itself.

Discovering that there was a lengthy backlog in obtaining a vessel, the enterprising First Nation began looking into manufacturing the boats themselves.

“We were on a wait list for three years to get it built,” Chief Terry Paul said in an interview at his Membertou office Wednesday. “As a result of that we’ve agreed that the potential for fish boat-building is very good.”

On Friday, federal funding support for a vessel manufacturing facility that is a joint venture with Canadian Maritime Engineering Inc. (CME) will be officially announced. Membertou band council has received a conditionally repayable loan of $750,000 under the Atlantic Canada Opportunity Agency’s business development program toward the project, which has a total value of $1.577 million.

Located adjacent to the Canadian Coast Guard College, renovations are nearly complete at the facility, where boats will be manufactured using hulls produced by Samson Enterprises in Petit-de-Grat.

A ramp has also been constructed to get the boats in and out of the water.

“We feel that there definitely is a good market for that and we have people like CME that have the expertise to help us get the necessary training that the integration of boat-building as an industry that we can fit well into,” Paul said.

He said they had good discussions with CME about working together on ventures including the North Sydney-based company’s ship repair and dismantling work.

The hope is that production — employing 10 people full-time and several others part-time — could begin this fall, with a goal of producing a dozen boats a year, with up to three boats under construction at a time. Employees will be a combination of seasoned boat-builders and people new to the industry and trained through CME.

“It will create jobs and it will help people stay here,” Paul said.

Waterfront enterprises are front and centre as Membertou continues to develop its wide-ranging business interests.

Another project underway is on the other side of Sydney harbour, at property it acquired at a wharf between Logistec and Provincial Energy Ventures where it has embarked on in-filling involving about 800,000 cubic metres of fill.

Last year, the First Nations community purchased 70 acres of land including 1,000 feet of waterfront at the end of Stable Drive, between Provincial Energy Ventures Ltd. and the Sydney International Pier, which is run by Logistec Corporation and near Harbourside Commercial Park. The area has access to the Sydney Port Access Road.

The land was purchased for $1.2 million from Nova Scotia Lands and the deal took several months to be completed.

“It’s prime property now,” Paul said. “We plan on building a wharf in the future and wanted to be able to have more access to the water. We have some fishing interests we feel would utilize that property in the future.”

In addition to its own fishery, boats belonging to other fishing interests could also make use of that site, Paul said.

When Membertou announced just over a year ago that it had purchased land, including waterfront property, Paul hadn’t yet determined what it would do with it.

It still remains to be seen what use some of that property will find, Paul said Wednesday. It is seen as potentially a multi-use piece of land, with potential for manufacturing and a laydown area.

“It’s always good to buy land, it’s hard to make a mistake on that,” he said. “The property that’s at the harbourfront is very valuable and it’s become very scarce so we had this opportunity to purchase land there, and of course we seized that opportunity.

“We know that in the future, if nothing else, that land is very, very valuable.”

As for its Churchill Crossing retail development, Membertou is about 95 per cent completed on the design on a service station with a food component that could begin construction in the summer. Discussions are continuing with other potential groups who Membertou won’t name, but there is one retailer that Paul will definitively rule out, despite the desires of many Cape Bretoners.

“They heard the rumour themselves … we’re here to tell you that Costco is not coming to Cape Breton,” Paul said. “They said, ‘We’d love to, but they don’t have the market.’”

nancy.king@cbpost.com