“At this point it is unclear,” wrote Jo Coyne, in an email today about the proposal for a massive cold storage warehouse planned for the western waterfront of Portland. “Whatever is going to happen with the cold storage warehouse in 2020 is pretty much anyone’s guess at the moment,” she continued. Coyne, a resident of the west end of Portland, has spearheaded the communications of the on-again off-again controversial proposal – dating back to a proposal by Americold rejected by most west end residents.
On October 13 of this year, mhn.com published a report from Coyne that plans for a second cold storage warehouse near Eimship on the waterfront were being proposed by the Maine Port Authority. The first attempt ended in failure and it’s interesting to note the second effort was much larger in size than the first proposal to be built by Americold.
Coyne and other key residents of the west end attended a meeting hosted by Woodard & Curran in October in which the proposed project was described. But when the meeting became “semi-public” according to Coyne and the Maine Port Authority backed off insisting its plans “were “indefinite” according to Coyne in today’s email to her mailing list.
A cold storage warehouse was always part of the plan for the waterfront, but was never highlighted or emphasized when the plan was originally presented to the public. Wonder why!
MPA had hoped to fast-track the latest iteration of this warehouse by getting approval from the Portland City Council by the end of this year or the beginning of 2020. Construction was to begin this spring with completion in a year. “Fast-track” indeed.
Maybe the City Council just wasn’t ready to open up this can of termites so soon.