Portland got a first look at the Phase 1 plans for its Ocean Gateway Project on Oct. 10. The Ocean Gateway project includes over 18 acres on the east side of Portland’s waterfront district. The project starts at the Maine State Pier where the Casco Bay Ferry Lines dock, eastward to the foot of Munjoy Hill.
Portland Mayor James Cloutier called the presentation the “beginning of the process of evaluating the esthetic designs for Ocean Gateway.”
The most visual aspects of Phase 1 are the two buildings on Pier 2, which move international ferry and cruise ship passengers through customs and security.
“We have the same approach here as we do at the airport,” said Capt. Jeff Munroe, head of Portland’s Department of Transportation and Waterfront. “Everyone checks in at the arrival place, goes through security, and up a nice ramp to a sterile waiting area.”
In architect Winton Scott’s plan, the 5,000-square-foot receiving building stands where Pier 2 meets land, its clock tower a beacon. The clock is a donation from the Balzer Family Clockmakers of Freeport, and its works will be visible on the first floor. At night the tower will be lit.
As one approaches the building from land, the angled shed roof and breezeway create an archway entrance that guides the eye to the harbor beyond.
A ramp leads passengers to the Terminal Building at the end of Pier 2. Here passengers wait for either the SCOTIA PRINCE or their cruise ship. The west side of the shed roof slants steeply to protect passengers from the sun.
On the water side, the east side of the roof meets the west side in a knife edge suggesting the prow of a ship. The profile of the two-story, 16,000-square-foot building plays off the form of the receiving building.
An old fill site directly to the east of Pier 2 will become a park to link the two buildings. For environmental reasons the site cannot be moved or built upon.
Scott sees the buildings straddling the fine line between providing Portland with a handsome gateway to the city and preserving the working waterfront feel of the area.
He pointed out that shed roofs carry no cultural baggage, and in this design fuse the blue-collar, rough-and-ready feel of the waterfront with a sense of excitement and pride that Portlanders feel about their city.
Traffic patterns, parking (for SCOTIA PRINCE queues, local island cars, crews, and buses), as well as the Hancock and Commercial Streets’ extension and landscaping are addressed in the plan.
Munroe feels that Phase 1 will greatly improve the area, which is already dealing with the demands of large ships.
“We’ve had two years to work out all the bugs,” he says. In that time Portland has welcomed “75 cruise ships, 85,000 passengers, 50,000 crew, 900 people a day working on the Cianbro [oil rig fabrication project], and we’re very proud there hasn’t been one burp of a complaint.”
More public meetings will be held this fall to move the process along in order to take advantage of grants and federal money that will expire in 2004. Under the current schedule, the plan will be presented to the Portland Planning Board Nov. 18.