November 7, 2014 — From the Magna Carta to the Colonial Ordinance of 1641-47, to the successful Portland working waterfront referendum of 1987, the public trust right to access the water for fishing, fowling, navigation and commerce has been affirmed, and now is clearly not the time to sell it down the river.
Portland’s working waterfront is experiencing a burst of bold, new projects, and some marine entrepreneurs are finding it challenging to find the space they need.
Has the city once more underestimated the potential of a working waterfront to keep re-inventing itself over time, despite inevitable fallow periods? Has it forgotten that changes in products, markets, transportation and technology take time to evolve into new ways of doing things?
Referring to Portland’s 1987 working waterfront referendum, which limited most piers to marine-related uses, your recent editorial, “Our View: New business incubator gives glimpse into city’s future” (Oct. 18), credited the referendum with having protected much of the waterfront.
It also noted the impossibility, back then, of foreseeing the coming of the Icelandic Eimskip container operation, soon to be linked to rail in a multi-modal dreamscape west of the bridge: water, highway, airport and rail. Nor could we have envisioned the exciting Ocean Cluster House, a marine incubator business that will host new products and provide trade opportunities.
No, the two out of three voters in Portland who voted to “keep the port in Portland” in 1987 could not have predicted those specific projects, nor the proposed tug and barge project that could revive coastal domestic shipping, nor the construction of the huge Cianbro ocean-drilling platforms at the Maine State Pier, a project that brought jobs, tax dollars and rental income to the city of Portland. Who could have imagined Shucks, the remarkable lobster-processing business, also now on Maine State Pier?
Read the full opinion piece at the Portland Press Herald