Welcome

Foster Island is a private island off the coast of Maine which has been for sale for a few years now.  This web site is a proposal and a dream.  This site is all about what Foster Island could be.  Please keep that in mind when reading the pages here.  These ideas are just that: ideas.  The facilities do not yet exist.  They will need a total investment in excess of $5million (US) and at least two years to complete.

This website represents a dream of what Foster Island could become with a little investment.  It represents a balance of man and nature, fit to be a lasting legacy to generations to come.

This island is over 300 acres and about a mile and a quarter long by about 2300 feet wide, with a neck separating a larger northern section from a smaller southern section with a small harbour on the east side of the neck and a private beach just north  of that.

In order to maintain the wild, natural beauty of the island, only the southern part would be developed, leaving the larger, northern section wild.  This goes perhaps one step beyond the original conservation easement placed on the island in 1973 where a maximum of 5 homes would be allowed.  We would rather concentrate all development in one small section and leave the mile long larger part completely intact for posterity.

Imagine, if you will… Developing the smaller, southern part into a farm and conference center.  Some of the ideas we’re looking at are:

  • A highly efficient, year-round conference center incorporating a greenhouse and indoor permaculture demonstration.
  • Three Star or better accommodations
  • Surf and tidal electric generators
  • Savonious turbine wind generators
  • Organic farm
  • Intentional community to staff the conference center and tend the farm
  • Self-sufficient energy and food production
  • Green Powered marine taxi to and from the mainland (Sail, solar, electric, and/or oars)
  • Ancient Skills workshops including wooden boat building, blacksmithing, wool production, and more.
  • Hotel services for passing yachts.
  • Rent-able, private beach.
  • Camping facilities including composting toilets & emergency phones along the interior of the northern section.
  • Internet connectivity via line-of-sight radio or submerged fiber optic to the mainland – or satellite. (Phone connection via VOIP)
  • Fresh water recycling system
  • Solar and electric desalination facilities

With these facilities, the island could be not only self sufficient, but also economically sustainable.

The major hurdle in this project will be the initial funding.  Building these facilities will not be cheap, and the location on an island would make the endeavor all the more complicated.  Current rough estimates are that this will take at least $5million(US) and two years before it can be open to the public.  By building the conference center to be usable year-round, the profit could be increased and the initial investment paid back faster.

A rough layout of the process to open this island as a conference center would look like this:

  1. Acquire the island – perhaps through a non-profit or via private investment.
  2. Hire leading architects and sustainable living designers to draft the plans for the facilities.
  3. Establish marine taxi and initial grounds-keeper.
  4. Build and/or improve the docking area to accommodate heavy equipment for construction.
  5. Lay out locations for the farm and conference center.
  6. Build out the farm to support construction of the conference center.
  7. Build the conference center.
  8. Clean-up and decoration of the conference center and adjacent grounds.
  9. (Optional) Redesign dock area as a Welcome Center for year-round access.
  10. (Optional) Seek agreements for parking facilities near the public boat launch.
  11. Begin intensive campaign to attract business.
  12. Advertise the camping facilities, Yachter Hotel, etc.

Ideally, this could be accomplished by a non-profit or, if they are willing, the current owners.  For less than the cost of one fighter jet, we could create a research facility to teach the world how to best use our natural resources and live gently with Nature.  The high-end conference center will attract those with the money and power to make a difference and the inexpensive camping in the forever wild north end will attract those who care but may not have the money to make an individual difference.  The island itself can then form the common ground between the poor who care and the rich who learn so that together we may live better, closer to Nature, and our descendants may inherit a clean, friendly, healthy world.