The Live Lobster processing plant in Prospect Harbor, shuttered since early spring, is now owned by Garbo Lobster, a Connecticut-based lobster distribution firm. A sister property in Stonington was sold for $1.6 million to Granites of America, a Rhode Island company owned by Tony Ramos.

The new owner of the Prospect Harbor property bid $900,000 at the Sept. 26 foreclosure auction in Gouldsboro. The auction was overseen by Thomas Saturley, president of the Portland-based Tranzon Auction Properties.

The auction was ordered by TD Bank, which had filed a lawsuit this past spring claiming Live Lobster owed it $3.4 million. Live Lobster’s other Maine asset, a lease on a pier in Phippsburg, was sold to an undisclosed buyer for $215,000 the following day.

Saturley, a lawyer and former assistant attorney general in Maine who moved over to the real estate auction business in the 1990s, shared with Mainebiz how his real estate auction company prepared for the high-stakes auction. The following is an edited transcript of that interview.

Mainebiz: Your company is handling the auction of the three Live Lobster waterfront properties – in Prospect Harbor, Stonington and Phippsburg – a sale ordered by the lender, TD Bank. How did that come about?

Saturley: The Prospect Harbor property is . . . a ‘specialty’ property: Not everyone’s interested in a lobster-processing facility. That’s not the kind of thing that folks as a general nature are going to invest in. You obviously need to understand the lobster industry, you need to have the ability to have not only access to the inventory, you need to have access to the workforce, you need to have access to the markets where you will sell the product. And not everyone knows how to do that in the lobster industry.

[I think the property’s] time has come. As we all know here in Maine, lobster processing has become crucial, given the integral part it plays in the lobster industry.

If we have a greater capacity to process lobsters in Maine, as opposed to shipping them out to Canada, we’re more in control of our destiny selling Maine lobsters?

Mainebiz: Could you describe the physical attributes of the Gouldsboro property and how they would make that a viable location for a lobster processor? It has six parcels, 91 acres, 1,480 feet of shore frontage, a pier … there’s a lot there.

Saturley: It clearly is a significant facility located right there in the village of Prospect Harbor. With a number of different buildings and land, with a beautiful view and the wharf itself. There has been a retrofit of that processing plant there, with very state-of-the-art equipment, that makes the lobster processing very viable. And what you have there is located in a part of the state where the lobster inventory is readily available.

Mainebiz: Stonington has some intrinsic assets, then, because it’s so important as a fishing port?

Saturley: Stonington is a very important part of Down East Maine. And this particular property, which includes a lobster-holding facility and a buying station as well as a commercial wharf, is a special property. It is very possible that an individual or individuals would see this from a strategic plan to be a standalone, or an addition to what they already have.

Mainebiz: What interest in the Prospect Harbor property has been shown by the stakeholder lobstering community?

Saturley: Those are important stakeholders: They’re important to the asset we’re selling, because many of them either are providing the inventory and the product necessary to make these properties successful. But they’re also really very strong prospects – quoting you – of being able to control their own destiny.

Other stakeholders are involved as we alluded to earlier: Folks from farther away that either are in the industry or want to be. Another stakeholder important to the foreclosure process, obviously, is the borrower (Live Lobster).

These are also important properties in those towns as taxpaying entities. We live in the state of Maine and winter is coming and it’s important that these properties be protected and that they be preserved and hopefully enhanced for the viability of the neighborhood, the community and the towns in which they’re located.

Similarly, and this is significant with respect to Gouldsboro and Prospect Harbor, there’s a workforce that is a significant stakeholder with regard to this property.And that workforce needs to have a success so they can go back to work.

Tranzon Auction Properties

93 Exchange St., Portland

Owner: Thomas Saturley

Founded: 1991

Employees: 12

Services: Auctioneers of real estate and other significant assets

2012 transactions: More than $50 million so far

Contact: 775-4300

www.tranzon.com

Timeline for Live Lobster processing plant in Prospect Harbor

1906: Sardine factory built at Prospect Harbor, a village in Gouldsboro

1927: Prospect Harbor cannery purchased by Calvin Stinson and Jonas Wass

1931: Calvin Stinson takes over as sole owner

1968: Cannery burns. It’s rebuilt and equipped with Norwegian-made machinery that automatically cuts the heads and tails from the herring.

1990: Stinson family sells its factories in Prospect Harbor, Rockland, Belfast and Bath to Richard Klingaman and Woodman Harris, who retain the Stinson brand name

1999: Stinson Seafood agrees in principle to sell its sardine canneries in Prospect Harbor and Bath to Connors Bros. Ltd., a Canadian competitor.

2000: Connors Bros. Ltd. signs a consent decree with the Maine Attorney General’s office allowing its purchase of the Stinson Seafood facilities to go through. Among the decree’s provisions is the requirement that Connors modernize Stinson’s sardine-packing facilities. It also agreed to keep the Prospect Harbor plant open through the end of 2010.

2004: Bumble Bee Foods, based in San Diego, acquires the Prospect Harbor plant from Connors Bros. In the acquisition, it inherited the requirement to keep the plant open through 2010.

2010: On April 15 Bumble Bee closes the Prospect Harbor plant – by then the last working sardine cannery in the United States — leaving almost 130 people without jobs.

2010: Bumble Bee announces in August it plans to sell the Prospect Harbor plant to Live Lobster Co. of Chelsea, Mass.

2011: Live Lobster’s purchase of the plant closes in January. By summer up to 70 people are employed at the Prospect Harbor plant, which operated under the name Lobster Web Co.

2012: On March 23, Live Lobster halts lobster-buying and processing at the plant, citing cash-flow problems.

2012: On April 12, TD Bank sues Live Lobster, claiming the company failed to make loan payments and deposited some of its proceeds with another bank. TD Bank claims Live Lobster still owes it $3.4 million in principal and more than $4,000 in interest.

2012: In August, Tranzon LLC, a Portland-based real estate auction company, posts on its website that

auctions for Live Lobster properties in Gouldsboro and Stonington will be held Sept. 26, and another auction for the company’s former buying station in Phippsburg will be held on Sept. 27.

SOURCES: Bangor Daily News, Ellsworth American, Mainebiz archives