Fork Food Lab still in talks to buy South Portland property it has agreed to lease

File photo / Tim Greenway Bill Seretta, executive director of Fork Food Lab, said the Portland shared commercial kitchen and food startup incubator is up to 64 members.

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By Renee Cordes

Fork Food Lab, a shared commercial kitchen and food startup incubator in Portland, remains in negotiations to buy a 42,000-square-foot property in South Portland that the lab recently agreed to lease. The property consists of two single-story office buildings at 95-97 Darling Ave.

"We crossed a line, but we're not at the finish line," Bill Seretta, executive director of Fork Food Lab, told Mainebiz on Monday, less than a week after Malone Commercial Brokers announced the lease.

The lease was brokered by Jennifer Small, associate broker at Malone, and Joe Malone, founder and president, on behalf of East Brown Cow, a Portland-based real estate investment, development and management company. Brice O'Connor at the Boulos Co. represented the tenant.

Fork Food Lab, owned by a Yarmouth-based nonprofit, is currently at 72 Parris St. in Portland's West Bayside neighborhood, with 64 members and a waitlist of potential others. The Darling Avenue space is about eight times the size of the current footprint. Fork Food signed a purchase and sales agreement for the larger space last October.

In March, Fork Food Lab cleared another hurdle when the Finance Authority of Maine approved 90% pro rata insurance on a $3.6 million loan from Mascoma Bank to help finance the purchase. Mascoma is a mutual bank headquartered in Lebanon, N.H., with a Portland office.

Seretta said Monday that while $4.4 million in debt financing is in place for the property purchase, an investment fund that was going to contribute $2.5 million pulled out at the last minute. He declined to identify the fund.

"When that happened," he said, "we went into negotiations for a lease option." The 10-year agreement gives Fork Food Lab an option to buy the property, which Seretta hopes to do this year.

He also admits that while proceeding that way poses an inherent risk in today's high interest-rate environment, not moving ahead would be an even bigger risk.

"Certainly the interest rates will be higher, and we don't know where that's going to end," he said. "Even when they flatten, we have every motivation to close yesterday. But there is always the downside if we don't."

He also said that while there's no deadline for completing a deal, the terms will become less favorable after this year.

"The longer this drags on, the more expensive it becomes," he said.

Admitting to many sleepless nights over Fork Food's future, Seretta said, "Nothing every works out the way you think it's going to work ... but if you want to succeed, you've got to figure out how to make it work. That requires thinking outside the box, it requires compromise, and letting go of things you really wanted to do."