SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton Dec 29, 2011
The American Seafood Exchange is a $69 million project that currently has an option on two parcels in Boston's Marine Industrial park that have suitable waterfront capability to unload vessels.
Yesterday, the group announced the hiring of a project director, Daniel Johnson, who has experience with major Massport projects, guiding the development process for Boston's 400,000-square-foot International Cargo Port at 88 Black Falcon Avenue. This was a $53 million long-term ground lease project with Massport.
The Seafood Exchange says that throughout his 25-year career, he has executed major industrial projects in logistically challenging urban environments including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle.
The American Seafood Exchange LLC group that won a one year option from the BRA to create a development proposal for the site, has no obvious ties to the seafood industry. They paid $100,000 to the Boston Redevelopment Authority last March on winning the designation, but have a year to complete financing arrangements.
The company says the American Seafood Exchange will include a public display auction, public cold storage, fresh transfer and public packing houses and retail space in close proximity to Logan International Airport, Conley Cargo Terminal and the interstate highway system, which will allow fisherman to bring the catch to the customer in record time. It is expected to create more than 300 union construction jobs and up to 1,500 permanent jobs, and to stimulate region-wide job growth in the seafood industry. The project will also utilize cutting-edge green building technology and sustainable design, aimed at meeting LEED certification and directly reflecting the vision of Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino's “Innovation District” initiative.
At the presentation to the BRA last February, American Seafood Exchange principal Thomas Fitzgerald explained the intent of the project was to render obsolete the existing infrastructure for processing seafood at and around the Fish Pier a few blocks to the west of the site.
"On the Fish Pier today," Fitzgerald told the BRA board, "you can't turn an 18-wheeler, there's fragmentation, and you have to pay for transport and logistics. There's been nothing doing for three to four decades," he added.
So why would a politically connected retired boxer, a fitness club owner, a real estate agent, and an investment banker get involved in the seafood industry in Boston, where the volumes of fish are small, infrastructure costs are high, and those in the industry see little opportunity for new major capital investment.
To my thinking, the obvious answer is the fish pier. These guys are the front people, with bigger fish behind them. Massport, owner of the historic Boston Fish Pier, has long coveted that property as a financial gem far too good for use by the seafood industry when it could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate development and rents.
The only reason developers and financiers would build an entirely new seafood industry infrastructure on two parcels farther out in the harbor, in a more industrial area of Boston, is that they believe existing fishing industry businesses would be induced to move there. And who would do the inducing? Why Massport, which holds the leases on the Fish Pier.
This is not necessarily a bad idea. But all involved, from Boston's Mayor Menino, to the BRA, and the principals, should be upfront about the real economic goals of this project, which appear to be to free up the fish pier, now sitting in a fancy waterfront hotel and restaurant district, for development, and moving the existing seafood industry plants and vessels on the pier to a new site.
By making the goals of the project open, the seafood industry, ice plants, vessels and all involved can negotiate effective subsidies and economically viable rates for leases and facilities. But the fact that the industry could support $70 million in new investment on its own just is not in the cards, neither from the amount of fish landings and processing currently done, nor by improving on the existing efficient infrastructure of auctions, processing and transportation that exist in New Bedford and Gloucester.
This article is reproduced with permission from SEAFOOD.COM News, a subscription site.