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It took several meetings, but Crescent City Harbor Commissioners finally approved a five-year lease with a Discovery Bay-based seafood processor on Thursday.

But though he took credit for several modifications, Commissioner Brian Stone says he's worried the Harbor District's agreement with Fisherman's Catch to rent 250 Citizens Dock Road will put the agency at risk for of being sued.

Stone said it took him "yelling about it" for his colleagues to agree to revise the lease so the tenant will pay a fee for seafood brought into Crescent City as well as product trucked to his processing plant from out of state. The base lease is $2,000 a month — $24,000 a year — but Stone says now, the Harbor District will receive "as much as $60,000" annually due to his objections with the original lease.

But he still voted against it.

“One of the big things they were trying to con the public on was that we were going to get a poundage fee,” Stone told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Monday. “Basically we want a portion of the profits, but they were limiting it to 2 million pounds and then they would start adding the poundage fees.”

Stone’s colleague, commercial fisherman Rick Shepherd, recused himself on Thursday. The lease had come before the Harbor District Board of Commissioners four times before the final vote.

According to Commissioner Harry Adams, who thought the lease was a good deal, in addition to paying $2,000 a month in rent, the Harbor District’s new tenant, Fisherman’s Catch CEO Peter Nguyen plans to invest $200,000 to $300,000 in upgrades at 250 Citizens Dock Road, which is a 3,300 square-foot building.

Nguyen is also leasing 11,120 square feet immediately surrounding the building, which is on the north side of the port’s inner boat basin near Vance Avenue and the Purple Cat thrift store.

While a fish processor had operated out of that building about 10 years ago, it’s now being used as a storage facility for the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office, which rents it for $500 a month, Adams said.

As for poundage fees, Fisherman’s Catch will pay the Crescent City Harbor District 1 cent for product that is landed at the harbor. Adams said that 1 cent is what the Harbor District gets per pound for crab anyone brings across Citizens Dock.

If Fisherman’s Catch brings in more than 1 million pounds of product in a year, the Harbor District gets an additional half cent, according to Adams.

And for every pound of crab Fisherman’s Catch ships to the Crescent City Harbor for processing from Alaska, Canada or Washington, the tenant will pay 1 cent to the Harbor District, according to Adams.

Stone argued that since Fisherman’s Catch will be cooking crab at its facility, the Harbor District should charge a value-added fee rather than a poundage fee. At the Harbor District’s regular meeting Tuesday, Stone pointed out that the Chart Room, a seafood restaurant at the port, pays 6 percent of the profit they receive for every meal they serve to their customers.

“With Fisherman’s Catch, he is going to produce a product that’s either going to be cooked crab of some kind — I don’t know what kind of container they’re going to put it in, whether it’s going to be in a little aluminum can that is sold for so much money,” Stone told his colleagues. “We should be getting a percentage of what he actually produces. It should be a percentage of everything he produces.”

Stone also objected to the processor’s proposed location. He brought up the Harbor District’s plans to build a hotel near where the dredge ponds are at currently. Stone said those plans are part of the Harbor District’s Local Coastal Program that was approved by the California Coastal Commission.

“Do you think somebody would want to build a Marriott or Hyatt hotel next to a smelly crab site? The answer’s probably no,” he said. “And here’s the larger problem, that particular site is within a quarter mile of the Townhouse Motel, Quality Inn and is three-eighths of a mile from the Best Western and the rest of those hotels. I said there’s a potential for us getting sued because these other businesses were in place prior to the lease.”

Stone said he also raised concerns about the trucks that are expected to bring ship crab from elsewhere to Fisherman's Catch for cooking.

"They said, 'We'll go through and open up Vance Street over there next to Quality Inn,'" Stone said. "Do you think that Quality Inn will want to have semi trucks going down that street? Who's going ot maintain it? Who's going to fill in the potholes? Eighty-ton trucks will tear up that gravel road."

On Tuesday, Harbormaster Tim Petrick argued that charging Fisherman’s Catch a poundage fee is more appropriate than a value-added fee because the owner won’t sell anything directly from that building. The product will be cooked and shipped, Petrick said.

“The 2 million pounds they’re moving across the dock here, the majority of that will be cooked in that building and we’re already getting a poundage fee off that,” Petrick said Tuesday. “Because they’re not selling out of there is why we called it a poundage fee in this lease.”

Fishermen regularly bring more Dungeness crab into Crescent City than to other California ports. In 2019, the commercial fleet brought 7.8 million pounds of crab across Citizens Dock at a total value of about $23.8 million.

In March 2021, fishermen brought more than 4 million pounds of Dungeness crab into Crescent City at a value of more than $20 million, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reported.

Commercial fishermen statewide had landed $51.1 million of Dungeness crab as of Feb. 28, 2021, according to Christy Juhasz, CDFW environmental scientist.

On Tuesday, Adams pointed out that the building Fisherman’s Catch wants to lease is dilapidated. He said the operation has the potential to generate jobs and at the end of five years “if we don’t like what he’s done and don’t like how it’s running we go somewhere else.”

Adams is also skeptical about a hotel being built on the Harbor District’s dredge ponds.

“We’re going to get rid of the dredge pond sands so we can fill them up with dredge material,” he said.

However, with Tuesday’s discussion about the Fisherman’s Catch lease coming after the Harbor District approved an installment method for paying a $1.8 million settlement with Fashion Blacksmith, at least two members of the public urged caution.

Sandy Moreno, a local bookkeeper, accused the harbor of “piecemealing these things.”

“Where’s your plan?” She asked “And where are you doing the proper implementation?”


Kevin Hendrick, chair of the Del Norte County Democratic National Committee, who ran for Harbor Commissioner, urged commissioners to explore other avenues for raising revenue.

“The poundage fees at the dock is to pay for the docks. That’s where you get the revenue to keep that operation open,” he said. “This is a different operation with a different structure.”

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