What’s so ‘desperate’ about the situation on the Maine State Pier?

During his first State of the City address last Monday night, Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling stuck out his tongue and gingerly licked the third rail of Portland politics: redevelopment of the Maine State Pier.

I say “gingerly licked” because the mayor was coy about the topic. He didn’t actually refer to the pier — the publicly owned property at the corner of Franklin and Commercial streets, where Casco Bay Lines runs its ferries — by name, but rather to the long industrial building across from the ferry facility, famous for its enormous mural depicting whales, called the Portland Ocean Terminal.

The Portland Ocean Terminal building on Portland's Maine State Pier. City of Portland photo.

The Portland Ocean Terminal building on Portland’s Maine State Pier. City of Portland photo.

From 2007 to 2009, the highly politicized and often downright nasty battle between two developers vying to turn the public pier into a private playground for the rich left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Given Strimling’s significant political ties to one of the lead actors in that drama, Bob Baldacci, the mayor’s declaration that it’s time to “find agreement on what to do” with what he called “a desperately underutilized cornerstone of our waterfront” brings the bile in my gut to a boil again.

Let’s unpack the key words here: “desperately underutilized.” It’s an odd and exceedingly rare expression, one for which a Google search produces fewer than 200 results. We can all understand how a building can be underutilized — not used to its full potential — but how can it be said that this lack of use creates a “desperate” situation?

For whom does the building’s relative lack of activity create a feeling of “desperation?” The Sphinx-like Strimling didn’t say, but I suspect it’s a developer who desperately wants to profit from what is undoubtedly one of the most valuable pieces of public property in Maine.

It’s hard to figure how the building’s current state creates a desperate situation for its owners, the people of Portland. The Portland Ocean Terminal is home to a lobster wholesaler, Ready Seafood Co., that recently more than doubled the space it’s renting there, providing hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent that’s deposited into the city’s coffers.

Two other marine-related enterprises have expressed strong interest in leasing space at the terminal in recent years. Shucks Maine Lobster, a seafood-processing company headquartered in Richmond, signed a lease with the city in 2013 to rent 19,000 square feet there, but reportedly pulled out after the city changed the terms of the lease to accommodate a tugboat operator. “It’s very difficult to deal with a piece of property when the city is the landlord,” Shucks CEO John Hathaway told the Portland Press Herald.

Another promising tenant, a marine-business incubator called the New England Ocean Cluster House, tried — and apparently failed — to come to terms with city officials to rent the entire second floor of the building. That project could have brought upwards of three dozen innovative startups to the pier.

It’s not a lack of interest that’s resulted in the terminal being “underutilized.” Seems to me that a landlord “desperate” to rent space there could’ve found ways to make both those deals work. But instead of touting the terminal’s enormous potential to support the working waterfront, Mayor Strimling is characterizing the property as a failure.

That’s the same kind of misleading language our ex-governor’s brother used to describe the Maine State Pier almost a decade ago when, as a representative of hotel developer Ocean Properties, he and former Portland Mayor Peter O’Donnell began meeting privately with city councilors to pitch a mega-project: waterfront hotel, luxury office space, restaurants, retail, etc. The city’s pier was in such terrible shape, their argument went, that only a massive influx of private investment and development could keep it from falling into the harbor. It was a desperate situation, the public was told by city officials who backed the project.

That wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now, so why is the new mayor — elected with the help of Bob Baldacci and his campaign-management company, Baldacci Communications — peddling the same old lie? Something smells fishy here, and it ain’t the fish.

Chris Busby

About Chris Busby

Chris Busby is editor and publisher of The Bollard, a monthly magazine about Portland. He writes a weekly column for the BDN.