Only two proposals for the redevelopment of Maine State Pier met the stringent four-month late February deadline of Portland’s Community Development Committee (CDC). Both suggest a hotel, office building and accommodations for the high-speed Cat as well as the city’s tugboat fleet. Furthermore, both remarkably carry the same $90 million price tag. Currently the CDC is evaluating the nitty-gritty elements of these responses to a request for proposals issued last November (WWF Nov. 2006), with the expectation that by June or July a recommendation for one of them will head for review by Portland’s City Council.
So what makes these two proposals starkly different from one another?
Back up a minute and the instigation for these proposals in the first place is the fact that Portland-owned Maine State Pier stands on rotting pilings, with estimates for repair ranging from $10 to $15 million over 15 years, according to James Cloutier, head of the Community Development Committee.
The Olympia Companies promises a two-acre park, a pedestrian-scaled “village” of galleries and artisan studios and guarantees an $18 million upfront escrow account to fix the pier as well as build this park. “If we walk away after a year, having revamped the pier and given the city a new park, that will be a great thing,” say Kevin Mahaney, CEO and President of Olympia Companies, owner of the Hilton Garden Inn situated within view of this impending development. “The Maine State Pier should be a hub of Portland — the focal point of where the city begins and ends, a recognizable landmark when you come to visit, and a place where the water meets the shore.”
Ocean Properties suggests a very different alternative, intending to spend only $3 million up front to fix the pier, with four independent offshore fendering buttresses protecting it, according to Bob Baldacci, vice president of a large hotel development company based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Baldacci fondly remembers mulling over “the idea of doing something on the waterfront about seven years ago” with his old friends Tom Walsh and former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell (both of whom have invested in Ocean Properties’ vision of redeveloping Maine State Pier).
While the Olympia’s urban planners were holding upwards of 18 hours of open-forum meetings listening to what the community wanted, Ocean Properties was fine- tuning a master plan for cruise-ship-meets-hotel, a successful formula they’ve already fine-tuned in Key West, Florida. Ocean Properties envisions 400-passenger, 50-mile-per-hour high-speed catamaran ferries streaming up and down the coast, stopping at its hotels in Bar Harbor, Rockland, Portsmouth and, if the Maine State Pier proposal gets the go ahead, Portland, as well.
CDC’s Jim Cloutier, for one, is looking for a plan that would encourage the growth of Portland’s cruise ship scene. “Ocean Gateway has only one berth and we need at least two deep-water berths,” he said.
Phase One of Ocean Gateway has already exhausted allocated state and federal monies for berthing development. A private entrepreneur with the cash to fund an appetite for the cruise-ship business – this is the promise Ocean Properties outlined down to details like interfacing with The Cat’s current schedule. (The Canadian-owned Cat, traveling between Portland and Nova Scotia, is prohibited by the Jones Act from making passenger stops along Maine’s American coastline.)
A minor glitch caused a snag in Ocean’s master plan recently. Weeks ago, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection denied Ocean Properties’ application to build a pier off the Samoset Resort, its luxury accommodation fronting on Rockland harbor. This was good news, according to Ed Glaser, harbormaster in Rockland: “We’d love to have a high-speed ferry come to our public landing,” he said.
Details like a potential Rockland landing site for Ocean Gateway’s high-speed passenger ferries could be ironed out much more easily than the palpable outrage in Portland’s East End over Ocean Properties’ plans to build a 300-car garage on Commercial Street. Bob Baldacci argues that a garage is essential, in part to keep this development a year-round attraction. “We don’t want this to just be a tourist destination,” he argues.
The Ocean Properties plans includes a 10,000-square-foot food market – “the kind that gets hosed down at the end of day,” says Jim Naylor, one of the proposed investors in this mostly wholesale operation that would sell produce, chicken, beef, pork and cheeses. “The goal down the road is more farms in Maine and the city element that’s been missing is a market for their goods.”
While Olympia’s plan doesn’t entail the development of a megaberth beyond preserving the current berth at Maine State Pier, “if conditions warrant we would look to develop a megaberth,” says Sasa Cook, Olympia project coordinator. Cook is much more passionate while speaking about the priceless value of the currently unobstructed water-view corridors and unfettered pedestrian access.
Olympia Companies would solve the parking question by spending $13 million to build an off-site garage, arguing that hotel guests, in their experience at the Hilton Garden Inn, seem quite content to avail themselves of valet parking.
Sasa Cook is also quite adamant that citizens should retain maximum use of prime waterfront, not give up the space to a new waterfront parking lot. Alexander Yaegerman, planning division director of Portland’s department of planning and development, is going through both proposals with a fine-tooth comb, asking for further details when the plans appear to possibly deviate from urban planning decisions put into motion for East End development long before Maine State Pier went on the development block.
“Given the limited time framework [to develop a proposal] and given the way the RFP is crafted, it appears that the city has already decided what it’s going to do,” says Drew Swenson, a partner in the Longfellow at Ocean Gateway, part of the East End Riverwalk development, referring to controversy over the short time (Oct. 11 to Nov. 22), allowed by the CDC for the Maine State Pier development proposals. Swenson notes that at least four out-of-state developers called him, asking for available resources to put together a viable plan and all decided there simply was not sufficient time to put together a viable plan.
Former Sen. Mitchell, co-investor in Ocean Properties’ plan – months in pre-production before Maine State Pier was voted to be zoned to allow hotel development – puts it all quite simply, his illustrious voice on the phone from some faraway place: “There’s the unique resource of the pier and the success of Ocean Properties cruise port in Key West,” he observes, adding, “As the real estate market goes up and down, not everyone is prepared for the downturns and the long haul — Ocean Properties has the capabilities to see this through.”