The sleepy stretch of harbor on the Eastern Waterfront of Portland is blasting into construction mode, as the Ocean Gateway cruise ship terminal kicks off. The governor and assorted dignitaries literally shoveled dirt to break ground in a ceremony in early October. Expect lavish buildings to rise soon, out of the haphazard quilt of parking lots in this neck of the urban woods – rub your eyes once and click your heels twice and perhaps by then the 220-room Westin Hotel, replete with marble bathrooms, will replace the abandoned Jordan’s Meats plant. The construction crews may still be warming up their drill bits, but the sound of jackhammers has yet to drown the sound of jazz playing at Coffee By Design. Right now, Eastern Waterfront’s developers seem most preoccupied in laying foundations of goodwill, not concrete. The concern these days is over the appearance of propriety, of not only playing by the rules, but playing nicely.
Last summer, Paul Pottle, the Maine DOT project manager of Ocean Gateway, held an all-day “partnering” meeting with a professional facilitator so interested parties could identify themselves as stakeholders; everyone from Public Works to Portland’s sewage, utilities and parking departments met at Cook’s Corner in Brunswick to pin down their roles in the upcoming construction drama. By September, while Pottle was already the proud bearer of a red badge from Homeland Security, it was still too early in the game for him to know, off the top of his head, if the DOT had even paid the first invoice for Ocean Gateway. Not only was DOT still on budget, Pottle had not, as yet, needed to issue any “change orders,” using funds he typically allocates to cover unexpected expenses.
“No surprises yet, but then we haven’t broken ground,” laughed Barry Sheff, Woodard and Curran’s program manager and engineer for Ocean Gateway before things got started. “We’re still standing around close to singing ‘Kum Bah Ya’.”
A similar spirit of congeniality seemed to be inspiring the developers of the Westin Hotel Project; the Procaccianti Group of Cranston, Rhode Island, aspires to create a 450,000-foot development that blends right into the surrounding architecture. “Theygoing through extra hoops, trying to be sensitive, making modifications based on input from Portland’s planning board,” observed Larry Mead, assistant city manager for Portland.
Asking for something called a “contract zone order,” the Procaccianti Group went to City Hall to make sure its ballroom and auto court were exempted from the city’s height and set-back restrictions. “The ballroom space will be on one level with columns, which was too low for their minimum height restriction of 35 feet, and while the minimum setback for the sidewalk for that zone is five feet, we needed the auto court to be about 45 feet,” explained Tom Niles, executive vice president of development for the Procaccianti Group.
Winton Scott, the Portland architect who worked closely on the Ocean Gateway project, was asked to work with Atlanta-based Cooper Carry on the Westin’s design.
“We’re all very interested in having the project integrate into the neighborhood,” said Scott in September. “The whole plan of Westin is more of a four-sided design because it will occupy a complete city block – each block has a different set of circumstances and each side responds to these circumstances.”
“The footprint of the building is quite narrow, so the way the buildings sit on the land is really quite gentle, not a big footprint,” he continued. “The two interlocking L-shaped buildings of the Westin create open spaces that don’t block out the sky. Our intent is to have the building seem integrated as a response to Portland, not like something dropped in from Mars.”
As a result of listening closely to Portland’s Planning Board, the Westin’s architects configured the buildings so pedestrians might be able walk through the main entrance on Hampshire Street, go through to an outdoor porch on Fore leading to stairs outside on Fore – in other words, upon the hotel’s completion, pedestrians will be able to literally walk through the city block on which the Westin will be situated. And in further accommodation to the planning board, the Westin developers reconfigured their project to include pedestrian-friendly shops on India and Middle Streets.
Meanwhile, as something of a coda on this story of harmony and congeniality, the spat over unused rail-access rights between Phineas Sprague of the Portland Company and Drew Swenson, developer of Riverwalk, was resolved for an undisclosed sum – a confidentiality clause kept the amount private. While the two gentlemen may have been caught up in the cooperative spirit of the moment, it’s also true that the Portland Company complex looks to have all sorts of untapped potential.