After nearly three years of resisting rent increases and new lease terms, 14 boat and yacht clubs that occupy state land are now facing an ultimatum: Pay up and sign up by Nov. 23 or risk being evicted.
The clubs on Boston Harbor, the Charles River, and Mystic River are also being ordered by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation to comply with state laws mandating public access to waterfront zones by letting beachgoers and strollers walk across their property and use their restrooms.
The move comes 34 months after the Romney administration, as part of a push to increase state revenues from licenses and fees, targeted yacht clubs and boathouses based on land owned by the department, the successor agency to the former Metropolitan District Commission and the Department of Environmental Management.
Governor Mitt Romney sought to raise annual rents for the clubs by up to 500 percent or more for $222,000 in new revenue from two-dozen facilities. Several of the clubs are decades old and were established well before the state took their land for waterfront parks.
But 14 of the clubs have still not signed new lease terms, and many of those have held back their increased state rent payments in escrow funds while they and state legislators try to work out alternative deals, officials said.
Late last week, Thomas J. LaRosa, the department's general counsel, mailed an amnesty offer to the 14 clubs, giving them until Nov. 23 to sign the new permits, pay the overdue fees, and agree on public access terms. After that, LaRosa warned, the issue would be referred to Attorney General Martha Coakley for prosecution.
The 14 clubs are Charlesgate Yacht Club and Charles River Yacht Club, both in Cambridge; Dorchester Yacht Club; East Boston Yacht Club; Medford Boat Club, Mystic Wellington Yacht Club, and Riverside Yacht Club, all in Medford; Neponset Valley Yacht Club in Milton; Newton Yacht Club; Squantum Yacht Club and Wollaston Yacht Club, both in Quincy; South Boston Yacht Club; Watertown Yacht Club; and Winter Hill Yacht Club in Somerville.
Richard K. Sullivan Jr., the department's commissioner, said, "We're just simply enforcing these permits with respect to the fees and with respect to public access."
Sullivan, a former Westfield mayor who was named to head the agency June 11, said he did not know why the agency had failed to deal with the issue for the two years before that.
Asked about the likelihood that clubs could face eviction, Sullivan said, "I certainly hope it doesn't get to that, and I don't expect it will get to that. I believe that we will be able to work with each one of these clubs" to resolve the controversy.
Complying with public access laws "can be as simple as opening restrooms to the public or allowing the public to walk across the property to get to the water," Sullivan added.
Ted Chisholm - commodore of the Massachusetts Boating and Yacht Clubs Association, which represents the 14 affected clubs - said many consider the rent increases onerous. They have also been hoping that legislators would pass a law enabling them to sign up for 10-year leases, instead of year-to-year permits.
"What we basically have been offered is a permit to occupy the land," Chisholm said. "It doesn't give you any legal hold. It's not a lease."
A retired schoolteacher who belongs to the Mystic Wellington Yacht Club in Medford, Chisholm said, "Most of the people at my club will have to leave if the DCR tries to charge regular marina prices. I can't afford it."
Association secretary Jeanne A. White said the name yacht club may give a distorted picture of the controversy, as most of the clubs involved are just places where weekend boaters keep small vessels.
"The name yacht club doesn't mean big yacht. We have sailboats, powerboats," White said. "Automatically when you hear yacht club, everybody thinks we're all a bunch of rich people and we belong to these fantastic clubs. That's not true at all."
State Senator Michael W. Morrissey - a Quincy Democrat and a member of the Squantum Yacht Club off Wollaston Beach, - said many of the clubs are frustrated that "the DCR has offered them a one-year deal, take it or leave it."
"You want to be sure that if you are putting money into fixing up a place, you're going to be there in a few years," he said.
Sullivan should consider a wider range of sliding-scale rate hikes before threatening to shut down and evict clubs, Morrissey said. "One size doesn't fit all. Not all yacht clubs are created equal."
Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.
