Peregrine Turbine Technologies Chief Executive Officer and majority owner David Stapp said March 16, it would have taken a crow bar to pry him out of Wiscasset Municipal Airport, if the business hadn’t outgrown the space it leases there.

PTT and Peregrine Consulting, which Stapp fully owns, have been at the town-owned airport on Chewonki Neck Road for about a decade.

“I love the airport. I love aviation,” Stapp, a pilot, said. He’ll still keep his plane there and keep flying out of the airport even after Peregrine moves to the former Point East lots it’s buying from the town for $200,000, he said.

The sale is expected to close in May, so the office space should be ready for move-in by fall, Stapp said.

The latest lease on the upstair space in the airport’s main building ends in October; Stapp doubts more time would be needed, but if it is, he would probably seek a month-to-month lease at the airport until the move happens, he said.

On March 15, selectmen voted unanimously in favor of the purchase offer on the tax-acquired properties where two model homes sit, Town Manager Marian Anderson said. 

The planned buy follows the business’ growth and the town’s efforts to get the Point East properties and other tax-acquired lots in town back onto the tax rolls, Stapp and Anderson said. Both said it also speaks well of the job Sherri Dunbar of Tim Dunham Realty is doing for the town.

“She has aggressively marketed all of these properties,” Anderson said March 16. The current board of selectmen is action-oriented and has done a great job moving forward on tax-acquired properties, she added.

“It was really a very smooth process,” Stapp said about getting the offer to the board. “Sherri is doing a fabulous job helping the town sell properties.”

Dunbar said she makes all her clients a priority but that, as a resident and taxpayer and as president of the Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce, she is very happy to see properties go from tax-acquired back to tax-producing, and see a business grow, to the benefit of the local economy.

Peregrine has a staff of about 13 and is poised for rapid growth, Stapp said. Testing on a demonstration, prototype engine is planned for this year, he said.

Wiscasset approved Mason Station LLC’s planned Point East, 85-lot subdivision in 2006, according to materials the town provided to the Wiscasset Newspaper in 2015. The town later picked up most of Mason Station’s lots through unpaid taxes; the ones Peregrine is buying are the first to sell, Dunbar and Anderson said.

The South Point Drive lots where Peregrine is going sit near Ice Pond, which feeds the Sheepscot River, but the waterfront view was not a factor in the decision to buy, Stapp said. It was about the office space: The two buildings together come to about 5,000 square feet, compared to about 1,200 square feet the business has had at the airport, he said.

“We just liked the space,” Stapp added about the homes, which will be bought under Peregrine Consulting. “They were built to high-quality design standards.”

The two lots with the model homes are a fraction of an acre each, making the homes quite close to each other so the deal will include a lot to the left of each home and a lot to the right of each home, for a total of six lots, according to Dunbar and Stapp.

Airport Manager Frank Costa on March 16 said he would like to see the next tenant be a flight school; but he and airport advisory committee members said whoever comes in will keep the revenue stream coming from upstairs, so, they said, the airport should start getting word out that the space will be opening up.

“This gives us a very real opportunity ... and I’ll be like the horse at the gate,” ready to help, Costa said.

He and committee members said they would welcome a business that is just starting out and could stay for as long as the space meets its needs, as Peregrine did.

“We may be able to repeat that same process,” Steve Williams said when the committee met March 16.

The properties Peregrine is picking up will need some work, according to Dunbar. The buildings were once very nice and will be again, but unoccupied there has been water damage, including floors buckling, she said.

As Peregrine grew, it looked at possibly taking up other space within the airport, but nothing panned out that worked for both the business and the town, so Peregrine looked elsewhere in Wiscasset and the midcoast, Stapp said.

The price and caliber of space were right with the South Point Drive properties, he said.