Planning (and paying) for the Maine State Pier
By John Anton
[Editor’s note: John Anton is a former Portland Planning Board member who’s been active in discussions about the future of the Maine State Pier. He is president of the Northern New England Housing Investment Fund, a private non-profit that provides capital and technical assistance to affordable housing developers in Maine and New Hampshire. A resident of the West End, Anton tells The Bollard he intends to run for an at-large seat on the Portland City Council this fall. In the following essay, which Anton structured as a self-interview, he discusses the two proposals city officials are considering for redevelopment of the Maine State Pier. Last fall, the city advertised a formal Request for Proposals (RFP) seeking private investment to pay for repairs to the publicly owned pier. For more on these proposals, see our Feb. 22 article in News, “Mega-project proposals for State Pier unveiled.” – C.B.]
Q: Your comments to date have been exclusively negative. I want to hear some good news. Can you tell me any good news regarding the Maine State Pier?
A: Absolutely. I see a number of signs that the citizens of Portland are reclaiming the decision-making process regarding the Maine State Pier.
First, in November, the residents of the peninsula elected Kevin Donoghue and David Marshall to the City Council. Kevin and Dave are not beholden to the councilors who have brought us to this point. They will insist on transparency as the city proceeds.
Second, Portland Trails and Greater Portland Landmarks have stepped up to convene a public process to consider the proposals that have come forward. I am excited to see these two established and respected civic organizations step into the void created by the City Council’s unwillingness to entertain an open and thoughtful debate about the future of the Maine State Pier.
Q: What do you think of the two proposals?
A: I think the first level of analysis is to remember that the RFP is fundamentally flawed. It operates under the premise that the Maine State Pier is a piece of public infrastructure that can and must support its upkeep from revenue it generates. No other piece of infrastructure owned by the city or state is required to fund its upkeep this way. Once that assumption informed the RFP, it precluded any possibility that a developer would submit anything that did not maximize the revenue-generating potential of the site.
It is therefore no surprise that the two proposals offer very similar development programs (a mix of offices, hotels and retail). Viewed within this unnecessarily constrained context, I believe that The Olympia Companies’ proposal is much stronger than the Ocean Properties proposal by virtue of 1) placing parking off-site; 2) a site plan organized around a park at the southeast corner of Franklin Arterial and Commercial Street that maximizes the site’s views of Casco Bay and the public’s access to the water’s edge; and 3) a financial plan that contemplates saving for the long-term maintenance of the pier.
Ocean Properties’ plan to put a surface parking lot right in the middle of the pier reflects a stunning failure to engage with the key value expressed in the city waterfront planning documents – “surface parking on the waterfront is the nightmare scenario.”
Q: What about a hotel on the pier?
A: I have never understood the reasoning that led the Council to pass zoning that prohibits hotels on the pier but allows offices. My speculation is that it was political rather than policy reasoning intended to allow councilors to give themselves “cover” by being able to say, “I made a principled stand against hotels on the pier.” I further surmise that this principled stand was developed in closed-door negotiations with Ocean Properties while Ocean Properties fine-tuned their plans before the rezoning was completed and the RFP was issued.
In my opinion, a hotel on the pier is no worse (and no better) than an office on the pier. Having said all this, I personally remain skeptical that either a hotel or an office building is appropriate for the pier itself.
Q: Who is Overseas Shirley and why is she hanging around the MSP?
A: Overseas Shirley is the 789-foot tanker that began berthing at the MSP on Friday, Feb. 23. I do not know why she is there, but I am guessing that it is for water or repairs or both. I am skeptical that an 800-foot tanker like the Overseas Shirley will be able to berth at the MSP after a hotel and office are built. Perhaps I am wrong or perhaps such vessels have other places to go in the harbor for these services. Nonetheless, the public has been told many times that the MSP provides a 1,000-foot, deep-water berth that is a unique resource in the harbor and must be preserved.
The question that remains for me: What users will this 1,000-foot, deep-water berth serve? Is it simply a cruise ship berth or will it be able to accommodate other, more industrial uses? I don’t know the answers, but I want the city and the region to be certain that any redevelopment plans for the MSP do not prevent uses that may be critical to the economic vitality of the Port of Portland as a whole.
Q: Isn’t it unfair for the city to open up the Maine State Pier to redevelopment, yet continue to impose “working waterfront” restrictions on the private pier owners in the adjacent Waterfront Central Zone (WCZ)?
A: Yes. It was unfair when city officials began this process and continues to be unfair as they proceed. To me, it is unacceptable that a public body constrain waterfront non-marine development in its capacity as a regulator, while actively promoting it in its capacity as a landowner. The purpose of a city owning property is to allow it to further a public interest that cannot be supplied by the private market alone. The city should not own property to compete with a private market that it is simultaneously limiting.
I suspect, however, that those within city government promoting redevelopment of the MSP would be quite happy to see the pier owners in the WCZ use the MSP redevelopment to trigger the demise of the “working waterfront” zoning.
Q: Aren’t you just another peninsula-dwelling, liberal carpetbagger from Massachusetts? What about all the money the city will make by leasing MSP for redevelopment? You just want my taxes to go up.
A: Both proposals offer the same lease payment to the city – nothing. Both developers instead propose that they will rebuild and upgrade the pier (although they differ substantially on the cost and, presumably, the scope of the pier upgrade) for the city, in exchange for the city granting them a TIF [tax increment financing arrangement]. Put another way, both proposals will use real estate tax proceeds to rebuild public infrastructure.
This, of course, is exactly what cities do every day, and why we give cities the ability to levy taxes.
Herein lies the fallacy of the windfall to the city from the MSP redevelopment. Both proposals predict that the mix of retail, offices and hotel rooms will generate about $1 million in tax revenues – pre-TIF – every year. That same mix of retail, offices and hotel rooms would generate the same $1 million in taxes anywhere else in the Old Port or eastern waterfront. The only way in which the tax revenues from the redevelopment of the MSP would constitute “new money” to the city is if there were no other sites in the vicinity where this kind of development could happen, or if there was so much demand for this kind of development that the existing inventory of sites could not meet it. Of course, there are plenty of sites available for hotel, office and retail development in the vicinity.
Q: Is the city’s approach to this part of a broader, disturbing pattern of behavior?
A: Yes. The MSP plan illustrates two patterns that I’ve witnessed from the city over the past several years. The first is a failure to adequately plan and save for the repair of public infrastructure. The second is the strategy of disposing of public assets – e.g., Martin’s Point, the Maine State Pier or an elementary school to be named later – to balance an annual budget. I’d like to see the Council instead balance the budget by reducing structural operating costs, rather than auctioning off buildings and land willy-nilly.
Q: What would you like to see city officials do next?
A: Convene a genuine public process by acknowledging that the RFP was really just a test of development skills and approach, rather than a solicitation of bids to be fine-tuned prior to proceeding. In that context, the city should select Olympia as a development partner based on the superiority of their submittal – but they should not accept Olympia’s development plan in toto. Instead, the city should work with Olympia to craft a waterfront redevelopment strategy that includes both the State Pier and the WCZ, and grant Olympia rights to develop on the MSP site.
A critical component of this strategy will be the creation of a dedicated fund where all new tax revenues resulting from redevelopment waterfront-wide are deposited and saved for future upkeep of public waterfront infrastructure. This in turn will allow the redevelopment plans for MSP to be focused on maximizing public benefit, rather than generating revenues on site.
Q: What’s your next move?
A: Rallying folks to attend the March 20 Community Development Committee meeting. We must get the message to the Council that we are paying attention to their actions and we intend to hold them accountable. I look forward to the city creating a forum where I and others who care about the waterfront can feel safe to be open to, and curious about, new ideas for the waterfront’s future, without fearing hidden agendas and municipal desperation for the quick buck.
