December 31, 2018 — In Maine’s decades-long fight over working waterfront, developers have consistently held a distinct cash advantage over fishermen.
That hasn’t changed, so advocates for ensuring that enough Maine piers and wharves remain available to preserve the state’s embattled maritime workforce have adopted new tactics. And there’s hope the state could free up more cash soon for working waterfront preservation.
When Portland’s city council earlier this month enacted a six-month moratorium on non-marine-related development along the city’s working waterfront, even The New York Times paid attention.
The moratorium resulted from a signature-collecting effort for a referendum that would seek to reinstate a requirement that all new projects in the waterfront zone be water-dependent, a rule that would effectively block new construction of hotels, restaurants and offices, which have proliferated in the area in recent decades.
Among other developments, the petition was triggered by a $40 million development project — four-story hotel, retail shops, office space and a parking garage — proposed for Fisherman’s Wharf.