It’s hard to know what to make of Eric Cianchette’s claim that city politics made him abandon his plans to build a luxury hotel on the wharf he owns on the central waterfront.

Yes, Portland is in the middle of a leadership transition, with the identities of a new city manager and the first popularly elected mayor in nearly a century still to be determined later this year.

Yes, Portland has a reputation as a challenging place for developers to do business, which was one of the driving forces behind the elected-mayor campaign.

But Cianchette’s complaint is more with the zoning code than the personalities at City Hall. His wharf was zoned for water-dependent industrial use when he bought it, and it remains so today. He received an unprecedented look from the City Council when he proposed the rough outline of a contract-zoned development. But his idea was turned down by the Planning Board, and he abandoned it without going back to the council.

Balancing the needs of Portland’s working waterfront with other kinds of business has been a front-burner issue for the city for a generation, and any property owner who thought he could easily circumvent the marine-use-only zoning approved by the voters in the 1980s was not looking at history.

A much more complicated rezoning of the entire central waterfront area, which is still awaiting state approval, was produced after months of negotiations and compromise.

The new rules proposed by Cianchette’s fellow pier owners would allow restaurants and other non-water-dependent businesses on piers, but not hotels.

So, unable to build a hotel on his pier, Cianchette says he is selling it and calls the city unreasonable.

A city government that balances conflicting interests of its residents and businesses is not unreasonable. A businessman, however, who buys property with a plan to develop it in conflict with existing zoning, and then complains when the municipality sticks by its own well-established rules, may be.

 

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