The city of Portland decided to enter a second round of Maine State Pier negotiations Monday night.
City councilors voted 7-2 to open talks with Ocean Properties on a $160 million proposal to build a hotel, office and park complex on and around the aging pier.
The vote came nearly two months after the city ended talks with The Olympia Cos., the Portland company that originally was awarded bargaining rights for the pier after a contentious competition with Ocean Properties that ended in December 2007.
The decision means the long-running effort to trade lease and development rights at the pier for an estimated $18 million worth of repairs there has entered a new phase. And like many of the turning points in the 2½-year saga, Monday’s vote came after more than an hour of contentious debate.
“This is our land. It’s not the Walshes’ land, it’s not the Baldaccis’ land,” said Matt Isgro of Hancock Street, referring to Ocean Properties President Tom Walsh and consultant Robert Baldacci. (Baldacci is part of an investment group that has signed an agreement to purchase Blethen Maine Newspapers, which includes the Portland Press Herald.)
Isgro was one of several people at Monday’s meeting who urged the council to stop the process “in its tracks” and give the public a chance to brainstorm a new direction for the pier – one not anchored by a hotel and office complex.
He and others said the council has excluded residents from the planning process for what is widely considered Portland’s prime piece of public property up for development.
“We should be allowed more say,” said Tina Smith of Howard Street, who ran unsuccessfully for an at-large council seat last fall.
Their comments riled some Ocean Properties supporters and City Hall observers, who said the state pier issue has been the subject of dozens of community events and public meetings since the council first sent the project out to bid in the fall of 2006.
“This project was vetted to the public extensively,” said Donna Carr, an Ocean Properties supporter and a former city councilor.
The only two councilors to oppose the new round of negotiations were David Marshall and Kevin Donoghue. Both said the city should have held additional public meetings on the pier issue before it went back to the bargaining table.
Councilor Dory Waxman continued to face questions about her objectivity on the pier project Monday.
Waxman worked as a paid community organizer for Ocean Properties during the initial pier competition in 2007, and received more than $1,000 in contributions from company executives and supporters during her election campaign last fall.
City Attorney Gary Wood has said Waxman does not meet the legal threshold – a 10 percent stake in the company – for a conflict of interest that would require her to sit out of votes involving Ocean. Waxman again addressed her ties to the company before casting her vote – something she did during a workshop session on the state pier issue last month.
“I don’t believe I have any conflict whatsoever,” she said.
Isgro, who recently launched a Web site on the pier issue (http://statepierforme.ning.com), criticized Waxman for casting a vote in favor of the project. He also noted the contributions Ocean executives sent to councilors Daniel Skolnik and Mayor Jill Duson during their election campaigns in 2007.
Skolnik said he had a “higher duty” to support a project that will create jobs at the waterfront in a down economy.
“Sometimes, there’s a difference between righteousness and responsibility,” he said.
The Olympia Cos. proposed a hotel and shops on the pier and an office and park complex on land nearby....
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