Boathouses lose their free ride

Yacht club. The words alone can evoke images of crisp polo shirts and Topsiders, champagne cocktails, and sun-kissed decks. Not the type of lifestyle that needs state support to survive. And yet boathouses and yacht clubs across Greater Boston have been occupying prime, state-owned waterfront properties at rock-bottom rates for decades. Take, for example, Harvard University's Sailing Pavilion, which pays $1 a year for its Charles River digs.

Well, no more. The Romney administration is jacking up rates by as much as 10 times for the two dozen boathouses and yacht clubs whose leases expire at the end of this year. And from Watertown to South Boston, from Medford to Quincy, all will be required to provide public access to their waterfronts.

''This is a key part of the governor's reform agenda," said Joseph O'Keefe, spokesman for the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, which oversaw the effort.

It took a year of site visits, comparison studies, and meetings to determine the rates, which will jump from between $1 and $1,980 a year to between $5,000 and $15,000. O'Keefe says it's part of a complete overhaul of the state park system by the newly constituted Department of Conservation and Recreation, an amalgamation of the Metropolitan District Commission and the Department of Environmental Management. The agency plans to review all of its state land use agreements, including those for cellular telephone towers and utility pipelines. With the new boathouse rates alone, the agency is squeezing $222,000 more a year from its parklands.

If the state can collect it, that is.

''They're going to have a hard time getting that kind of money out of us," said Jack Branagan, commodore of Columbia Yacht Club in South Boston, whose annual rate is increasing from $1,980 to $10,000. ''People think yacht clubs are full of rich people because they've got boats. But we're a working man's club. There ain't nothing fancy about it."

Boat owners are livid too, about the prospect of letting members of the public on their clubs' docks. They say it will jeopardize the security of their boats.

''This is major, major, major," lamented Ted Chisolm, past commodore of the Massachusetts Boating & Yacht Clubs Association, which counts 17 of the affected clubs among its members. ''Public access to the docks? No way. You cannot have full access to the waterfront if it's rented by a club."

In order to renew their state land use permits, the boathouses will have 180 days to apply to the Department of Environmental Protection for a special waterways license, which stipulates the public be granted access.

''There will need to be some public access provided in, on, or across these facilities," said DEP spokesman Ed Coletta, who added that security would be considered and each club would be assessed separately.

For the 10 boathouses and yacht clubs whose permits and leases expire in the coming years, O'Keefe said, they, too, will be required to provide public access and pay higher rates.

Adjusting the rate for Harvard University's Newell Boathouse lease will require a little more effort. The boathouse, home of the university's men's crew team, has a 1,000-year lease that doesn't expire until 2900, plus it has an option to renew for another 1,000 years. O'Keefe said the Romney administration plans to introduce legislation next year to bring its $1 rate in line with the others, a move university officials are not heralding.

''To reopen that now is something we would be reluctant to do," said Kevin Casey, Harvard's director of federal and state relations.

The Harvard deal provides a prime example of how the boathouses scored cut-rate leases in the first place. Many existed before the parklands did, when the Charles River was a marshy tidal estuary. The Metropolitan Park Commission, predecessor to the Metropolitan District Commission, was created in 1893 and began acquiring parcels along the river to create the Charles River parklands, negotiating with landowners like Harvard.

In exchange for giving the state a parcel on the south side of the river in Brighton, Harvard asked for a 1,000-year lease on a sliver of shoreline to build a boathouse. The park commission obliged. In 1906, the university secured another, less-generous, 99-year lease for its Weld Boathouse across the river. The Legislature renewed that lease for another 99 years in 1989 for $500 a year. In exchange, Harvard donated 15 acres of land, known as Blair Pond, to the state, and agreed to pay $100,000 for better lighting for the Larz Anderson Bridge and to maintain the area around the boathouse.

''I think the nature of that deal should still be honored," Casey said. ''We would hope that reasonable people would think that's a unique relationship."

Environmental advocates have long been pushing the state to use a more consistent approach with the boathouses and yacht clubs, foregoing individual negotiations that can spawn special deals for some, and to require all of them to pony up more public access. Some of the fiercest battes have been at the Watertown Yacht Club, where a wooded trail that runs along the Charles River is diverted around the club and its 550 feet of shoreline.

''If they're going to have a yacht club, there should be public access and a public wharf or pier or launching place, and maybe some parking so that they don't sort of wrap the thing up for private club members," said John Pike, a volunteer lawyer with the Conservation Law Foundation, which has been lobbying the DCR and DEP for greater access in Watertown and at all the boathouses and clubs. ''The ultimate goal is to have a walkway along the entire river and harbor, except in those places where they have industrial uses that would make it dangerous."

Pike hailed the new state requirements as a giant leap forward for the public.

For the state, which has taken heat for years over its rock-bottom-priced land-use agreements, O'Keefe said the focus now is on consistency and fairness.

''It was something that was essential," O'Keefe said. ''We didn't want to repeat mistakes of the past."

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.