Professionals who choose to rent space on Portland’s waterfront find their workplace unique — a place to be savored not only for its view, but its gritty reality.
No Starbucks downstairs. Dead fish, yes; gourmet coffee, no.
Last Aug. 1, when Peter Leopold, Ph.D., owner of BioAnalyte, a high-tech software company specializing in biomarker discovery with mass spectrometry and bioinformatics, proudly transferred his thriving new business from his dining room on the Eastern Promenade to raw rental space at the Portland Company complex, he and his six employees were greeted with an authentically waterfront, completely unanticipated surprise: their tight, four-car parking-space allotment was completely consumed with a dock pulled out of the water by nearby Portland Yacht Services for routine cleaning.
“We opened our windows and smelled cooking seafood — there was a wonderful waft of rotting seafood,” says Leopold.
Professionals who think in the stratosphere find the waterfront grounds them. “I get a sense of balance in life between having a job trying to imagine what things look like in a universe where there is no light,” says Leopold. “And at the end of the day, you close up shop and you’re surrounded by boats, finding the joy in living in a tangible world of everything from plumbing to electrical soldering.”
Another kindred spirit, David Lloyd, president of Archetype, has enjoyed the waterfront ambience since moving to 48 Union Wharf back in 1989. His eight-person architecture firm hears the Portland pilots coming and going all day. “The sound of water traffic is a nice thing,” says Lloyd. Some days the lobster traps are piled high on his pier and the sound of jackhammers blasting the rust off boats isn’t the most charming aspect of being surrounded by a vital working waterfront. “Seagulls are nice unless they dump on you right before a meeting,” laughs Lloyd. “They covered the entire back of my shirt, which I didn’t know until I got to the appointment.”
Renting the second floor of a marine pier is one essential to making the Portland waterfront a financial success. “While clients love it – particularly the seals in the bay,” says Lloyd, “we not only complement the marine industry, we keep them afloat.”
Recent changes in waterfront zoning regulations, passed by Portland’s City Council in April 2006, changed the rules. Previously only 50 percent of the space in these buildings could be occupied by non-marine use tenants. Under these old regulations, too many buildings were left with empty space, resulting in too little rental income. At the same time, property owners keenly needed additional sources of revenue for maintenance and improvement of their marine infrastructure, according to Bill Needelman, senior planner for Portland.
Now, all upper floor space is available for certain non-marine tenants — for example, residential tenants are not permitted, but general offices and cabinet and carpentry makers get the green light. Furthermore, all along Commercial Street, now allowable on any floor are non-marine uses including retail stores and restaurants.
A very positive yet intricate web of inter-dependence now exists on Portland’s waterfront. BioAnalyte pays for heat in part of a large warehouse building where, among other things, yachts are maintained. Leopold’s heat bill pays to keep the sprinklers in the space behind his office space from being triggered in bitter weather. “We literally save the entire building from those sprinklers going off,” says Leopold rather proudly.
Janet O’Toole, accountant and co-owner of Honeck & O’Toole on Portland Pier, is well versed in the cost of maintaining a pier. After 19 years as part owner of her building, at year 15 her firm found itself spending a “significant” amount to maintain the deterioration of steel pilings under her office building. The sea has always been ruthless on the pilings holding up piers, and part of working on the waterfront is planning to pay for this inevitable cost. “The company that does maintenance on the steel pilings has told us to expect to spend $10,000 to $20,000 every few years,” says O’Toole.
The pleasures of working with a view of the sun glistening on the water and the scent of salt water floating past your computer might be distracting to some. “A lot of people ask how I get any work done,” says O’Toole. As a tax and financial planner for individuals and small businesses, her job allows few distractions. One waterfront reality, however, occasionally throws a curve in her schedule. Several times a year, her building experiences floods in high tides and neither she nor her clients can walk or drive down the pier — “unless you want to wade through a couple inches of water.”
On rare occasions such as this, the elevator shuts off and O’Toole walks downstairs; if she’s lucky a lobster truck will give her a lift to Commercial Street. “No one working on Congress keeps a tide chart on their office wall,” she laughs.
“If you don’t like the smell of fish, you shouldn’t be here.” says Lloyd.