The Portland Press Herald / The Maine Sunday Telegram

Parking, parking everywhere

As land-use policies along the harbor get new attention, some see potential for development in the sea of asphalt.

By Tom Bell tbell@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

PORTLAND – The city's waterfront serves many users – fish processors, shrimp fishermen, lobster dealers, slime eel harvesters, ship chandlers, whale-watching outfits, marine researchers and one of the country's largest floating restaurants.

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The DiMillo’s parking lot on Long Wharf is uncrowded on a recent weekday, but areas in the waterfront’s western end are even less utilized. “We don’t have a working waterfront. We have a parking waterfront,” said Don Perkins of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer

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But an extraordinary amount of space is used for something far more mundane: parking.

Until the middle of the last century, when Portland's waterfront was a hub of transportation and fishing activity, the piers were covered with buildings, including warehouses for grain, molasses, coal and wood.

Most of those buildings have been demolished over the years, and today more than three-fourths of the area that could be developed in the central waterfront zone has no buildings.

Instead, there is plenty of parking.

On the 15 piers between the Maine State Pier and the International Marine Terminal, there are 1,300 parking spaces in lots for commercial uses and lots bigger than 30,000 square feet. That doesn't include smaller clusters of parking for specific businesses, or parking garages and large lots nearby.

"We don't have a working waterfront," said Don Perkins, executive director of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. "We have a parking waterfront."

As city officials consider proposals to re-examine land-use policies on the waterfront, the parking lots represent both failure and opportunity.

For pier owners, the sea of asphalt is an unintended consequence of zoning that requires that the ground floor of any building be reserved for marine use.

That zoning, the decline in the marine economy and the high cost of building make it impossible to finance new construction on the piers, said Charlie Poole, whose family owns Union Wharf. The parking lots provide pier owners with steady income and help offset the cost of pier maintenance, he said.

While marine uses must be given the highest priority in areas closest to the water, the large parking lots in the interior sections of the large piers present an opportunity for development, said City Councilor John Anton.

The largest parking lot on the waterfront, for example, is the 95,000-square-foot lot on Long Wharf, in front of Dimillo's Floating Restaurant. That lot would be a far better site for a hotel than the Maine State Pier, which has critical access to deep water, said Anton, who in the past two years opposed plans for a hotel on the city-owned pier.

Eleven pier owners have proposed that the city ease zoning restrictions so they can have more non-marine tenants. One of their proposals would eliminate a city rule requiring property owners to provide parking spaces for tenants. The tenants would have to find their own parking elsewhere.

Poole said the city must reduce regulations to help the pier owners because there are already so many obstacles to development on the piers.

"Let's not miss the opportunity to locate a business on the waterfront just because we can't meet the parking requirements," he said.

The pier owners, though, already get a break. Property owners in business zones must provide one parking space for every 400 square feet of building space. Pier owners must provide one space for every 800 square feet.

City Councilor Kevin Donoghue said it would be unfair to other property owners to exempt the pier owners from parking requirements. He said the conflict over parking and development is a citywide issue and should be addressed as such.

He noted that later this month, the Planning Board will discuss a proposal to let developers pay fees in lieu of providing parking. The fees would fund transportation and parking improvements, such as the construction of public garages.

Donoghue said there is a parking imbalance on the waterfront. Parking is in great demand near the Casco Bay ferry terminal, but there are many empty spaces on the west end of the waterfront.

He noted that Angelo's Acre, a huge city-owned lot at the bottom of Park Street, is never occupied except during snow emergencies.

Donoghue said shuttle buses running along Commercial Street could connect the eastern waterfront with Angelo's Acre and other points, including the Portland Transportation Center.

More public transit is the key to eliminating parking lots on the waterfront, said Barbara Whitten, executive director of the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Greater Portland.

Adequate parking is important to Old Port businesses, she said, but it doesn't have to be on the waterfront.

"A sea of cars," she said, "is not an attractive way to market the waterfront."

Staff Writer Tom Bell can be contacted at 791-6369 or at:

tbell@pressherald.com