Ex-mayor, Gov’s brother push waterfront hotel project
Portland Ocean Terminal eyed for private development
By Chris Busby
Just months after leaving city government, former Portland city councilor and mayor Peter O’Donnell has been arranging meetings with individual city councilors to push a waterfront hotel project being developed by Ocean Properties Ltd., one of the largest hotel management and development companies in North America.
The other person present at these meetings: Ocean Properties executive Bob Baldacci, brother of Governor John Baldacci.
Ocean Properties is interested in the Portland Ocean Terminal, the city-owned marine industrial complex on the eastern waterfront. This site was previously occupied by Bath Iron Works, and was subsequently leased to Cianbro, the construction company that built two oil rigs there three years ago.
After the oil rig project, city officials and Cianbro tried to get more marine industrial work for the site, but other than a few small projects, nothing has materialized, said Captain Jeff Monroe, the city’s Director of Ports and Transportation. Monroe also said the roughly 100,000-square-foot warehouse at the Portland Ocean Terminal, built in 1922, needs repair, and structural work to strengthen the pier beneath it could cost $1 million or more.
The lack of a major tenant at the terminal will cost the city about $750,000 in lost revenue this year, according to budget documents. Given this situation, City Manager Joe Gray has asked the council’s Community Development Committee to “explore future options” for the facility.
This directive was made public in early April, and committee members are just beginning to consider how to address the facility’s future.
But some committee members and most other councilors have already seen plans for the property presented by their former colleague, O’Donnell, and Baldacci, who joined Portsmouth-based Ocean Properties last summer after over three years with the Portland-based public relations and consulting firm Pierce Atwood.
O’Donnell, an employee of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development, declined comment and verbally harassed this reporter when reached by phone for this article on April 27.
“You fucking asshole,” O’Donnell said. “I thought I told you not to call me. Are you as stupid as I think you are?”
Baldacci deferred discussion of the project’s details, saying it’s in an “extremely premature” phase. “The company I work with has had a longtime interest in Portland,” Baldacci said. “We’re looking at a number of different options [and] opportunities. We’re in the development business.”
City Councilor Will Gorham, whose district includes the terminal, declined to comment on the project. Several other councilors were hesitant to reveal the substance of their meetings with O’Donnell and Baldacci, but a few spoke willingly about the proposal, including Ed Suslovic and Nick Mavodones, a member of the Community Development Committee (CDC).
Suslovic was the first councilor reached for comment who spoke about his meeting with O’Donnell and Baldacci on the record. This circumstance has created controversy. (Read the sidebar to this story, “Crying over spilled beans,” by clicking here.)
City Councilor Karen Geraghty said in a phone message that she has not met with O’Donnell and Baldacci.
Jill Duson, also a member of the CDC, said she turned down an invitation to meet with O’Donnell and Baldacci about the project.
“I know there’s some project Peter O’Donnell’s involved in,” she said in a phone message. “I don’t know the details. I’ll be interested in hearing more once folks are ready to talk about it in public. Then I’ll be in a position to be able to talk to my constituents about it and see what people think.”
Duson added that the last time waterfront zoning was a topic of public discussion, “Portland residents were pretty clear… that they didn’t want hotels on the water’s edge. So I start from there. We’ll see if people have a different perception to any newly proposed projects.”
City Councilor Donna Carr said she met with O’Donnell and Baldacci “quite a long time ago, so I really can’t recall all the details of the conversation, but we just kicked around the idea of putting an upscale hotel down there.”
In addition to a hotel, other ideas discussed include parking, retail, a maritime museum and increased open space, councilors said. Mavodones said “a primary focus” of the development plan would be to “maintain the commercial pier, so there’d be a marine industrial presence” on the site.
City Councilor Jim Cloutier, chairman of the Community Development Committee, said several groups have privately expressed interest in the Portland Ocean Terminal. “They’d like to have us hand them the pier, but there’s definitely a public process,” he said of the interested parties in general, which number at least four.
Several councilors said they told O’Donnell and Baldacci there must be an open, public process by which the city will consider the Portland Ocean Terminal’s future.
“I really couldn’t give them any indication of support one way or the other because the process has yet to be developed,” said City Councilor Cheryl Leeman. Leeman said the city would most likely make a public request for proposals for the terminal’s redevelopment.
Cloutier said the CDC, and subsequently the full council, will decide what uses should be allowed on the site, which is currently zoned for marine industrial activities. “We definitely want to make better use of the pier and try to preserve some of the ongoing opportunities for marine industrial use and increase the public use,” Cloutier said.
Any arrangement with a private entity would be “a lease situation, at best,” said Cloutier, who declined to specifically discuss the Ocean Properties proposal. He added that “because of the infrastructure work that needs to be done down there, [a private tenant] would have to be someone financially qualified.”
Ocean Properties would certainly fit that description. Company founder Tom Walsh built his first hotel, The Plaza Hotel, in Brewer, Maine, in the 1960s. Today, Walsh’s family-owned company owns or operates over 100 hotels in the U.S. and Canada, as well as shopping centers, residential developments, restaurants, nightclubs and golf courses, some through affiliated ventures. The company’s local and regional holdings include the Portland Marriott at Sable Oaks, in South Portland; the Holiday Inn in Bath; and the Samoset Resort On the Ocean, in Rockport.
It’s unclear whether O’Donnell’s involvement in the project is part of his work for the state economic development department or a personal favor. “It’s probably both,” said Baldacci, who called O’Donnell “a longtime friend of mine.”
Jack Cashman, Commissioner of the Economic and Community Development Department, said he is aware of the project, but his department is “not specifically” promoting it. Ocean Properties “has not asked us for any assistance,” he said.
Asked if O’Donnell was representing the state department during his meetings with Baldacci and individual councilors, Cashman said, “I don’t know what the discussion was, so I can’t tell you what was said or what position [O’Donnell] was taking…. You’ll have to ask Peter.”
