A Rendering of the Proposal Provided by Woodard & Curran.
A Rendering of the Massive Proposed Americold Cold Storage Facility for the Western Waterfront That Application Was Withdrawn. The New Proposal is Reportedly Significantly Larger, But Those Details Have Not Been Made Public. That Would Give Opponents Too Much Information with Which to Criticize the Proposal.
What had been on the radar screen of many West Enders for months now, finally happened last month.
The city received a Level 111 Site Plan proposal for a cold storage facility located at 40 West Commercial Street. An ultra brief letter dated February 28, 2019 from Woodard & Curran submitted few details on the proposed location area of 17.9 acres of land – perhaps to give opponents fewer facts with which to oppose the proposal.
The letter does say, however, that the “interior program will include common business administration space, mechanical rooms, maintenance space, cold storage warehousing and shipping and receiving docks.” The height of the building is expected to be 75 feet tall at its highest point. It will occupy 120,000 square-feet on state owned property.
The proposal for a cold water storage facility next to Eimskip is seen as a necessary addition to aid their expansion plans – to supply a larger area of the northeast with their products rather than relying on trucking options that are slower and less efficient and more costly for the company.
West Enders fought the plans for Americold’s effort to build a storage facility in the same location several years ago. Only those plans were smaller then the current proposal. A cold warehouse facility was always part of the Eimskip redevelopment of the Portland waterfront. But these details were deemphasized until now for obvious reasons. Where will Councilor Spencer Thibodeau stand on this?
Eimskip has a clear advantage in having its headquarters in Portland because that gives the company a lot of leverage in how the city operates one current city official told this blogger last year. That response was an answer to a question from mhn.com askng: “Why did Eimskip pick Portland for its headquarters?”
George Campbell, a former Portland City Councilor and Mayor, who once resided on Munjoy HIll, is the point man on the project. His wife, Dawn Stiles, is a former director of the city’s Health & Human Services Department. (Years ago, when Campbell was a city councilor from the HIll, this blogger asked him about supporting a city landlord/tenant board. “The problem is that woman like you who have nothing at all, want everything,” Campbell responded. Ouch!)
Late last year, Jo Coyne, a west end resident, emailed that she and other residents of the west end had met during the fall with Woodward & Curran. Representatives indicated that Maine DOT planned to move forward with plans for a larger warehouse than previously proposed by Americold and it was on a “fast track.” However, once plans became public, the parties slowed down and backed off. (Please see December 31, 2019 post herein for more information on Coyne’s message).
Is this brevity of information on proposals to the city standard operating procedure? “This project will undergo a full site plan review. It;s early in the application process, but there’ll be more submission materials available soon,” wrote Christine Grimando, Director of the Planning ^& Urban Development Office for the City of Portland in an email on March 5, 2019 to this blogger in response to a question.
For more information, please contact Darrin Stairs, PE, Project Manager, Woodard & Curran, 207 558-3362 or by email at dstairs@woodardcurran.com. The architect is CWS, Scarborough. (207) 774-4441.
For some background information on the Americold effort, please read posts herein dated January 15, 2020, June 25, 2018, February 28, 2017 and December 31, 2018.