Cassidy Point

[Portlander]

Highlights from today's Portland Press Herald article.

 

[Portlander]

As long as the 600' pier can be brought back up to standards and used for transporting cargo and other maritime related purposes I would have no issues with a zoning change. The PPH is reviving a perennial debate over the future of Portland Harbor as they do with any new project that doesn't fit their agenda. Find a few disgruntled longshoreman and stir the pot which I guess in fairness is what the local media is supposed to do.

 

[PWMFlyer]

We have had this debate for over 50 years. What defines a working waterfront? I would say at least 90% of the waterfront is marine related. This is not the condo craze of the 80's when Michael Liberty built Chandlers Wharf. Merrills/Sprague has not seen the activity it has seen since the 80s/90s. Paper mills are shutting down, which the big rolls were always shipped out of Portland. Searsport now does the majority of that business. One of the warehouses has been dismantled due to lack of business. The salt ship will go somewhere else, leaving no scheduled ships for the dock. This is why the longshoreman are worried... its just a changing industry that they need to adapt.

 

[mainejeff]

We have had this debate for over 50 years. What defines a working waterfront? I would say at least 90% of the waterfront is marine related. This is not the condo craze of the 80's when Michael Liberty built Chandlers Wharf. Merrills/Sprague has not seen the activity it has seen since the 80s/90s. Paper mills are shutting down, which the big rolls were always shipped out of Portland. Searsport now does the majority of that business. One of the warehouses has been dismantled due to lack of business. The salt ship will go somewhere else, leaving no scheduled ships for the dock. This is why the longshoreman are worried... its just a changing industry that they need to adapt.

And it's easier to find a boogeyman to blame than to accept reality.

 

[TC_zoid]

Renovation illustration for White Stadium in Roxbury (Boston) for women's soccer starting in 2028. 11,000 seats at $325 million! You sure you can get something similar for $50 million at Cassidy Point?

 

[MarkHB]

Ethan Strimling has a piece opposing the stadium proposal. Of note: apparently Sprague was bought out by a hedge fund a couple of years ago, so it's entirely possible that they've let business go fallow to make a bigger profit flipping the property.

 

[mainejeff]

The political climate in this country does not lend itself to this site becoming an expanded shipping port. Is someone planning on securing non-existent Federal funds to improve this site after the coal is cleaned up? Don't look for any help from the EPA....they don't exist anymore. Maybe Canada can help out......errr.....forget about that one. No one wants a coal pile...no one wants a soccer stadium. Just what the f*ck do they want at this site that is economically sustainable?

 

[Portlander]

Portland Press Herald article

 

[cranewatch]

The political climate in this country does not lend itself to this site becoming an expanded shipping port. Is someone planning on securing non-existent Federal funds to improve this site after the coal is cleaned up? Don't look for any help from the EPA....they don't exist anymore. Maybe Canada can help out......errr.....forget about that one. No one wants a coal pile...no one wants a soccer stadium. Just what the f*ck do they want at this site that is economically sustainable?

How about this: A soccer stadium that maintains the commercial piers and access. Middle ground in our polarized world? Good idea Hearts of Pine!

 

[MarkHB]

How about this: A soccer stadium that maintains the commercial piers and access. Middle ground in our polarized world? Good idea Hearts of Pine!

I think the question there is, is it reasonable to put a large, public-facing attraction in the midst of a heavy industrial facility that operates on its own timetable (no guaranteeing that bulk cargo ships won't need to unload during games)? Particularly when the current owners of the facility (the hedge fund) may be more interested in flipping the property than operating a bulk cargo pier?

Portland has put far too much time and effort into preserving its working waterfront for this to go in without serious scrutiny.

 

[PWMFlyer]

Bulk Cargo is a dying industry here in Portland. Most of the Bulk Cargo business has moved to Searsport and to Eastport. Now with CP and CN operating in Maine, most of the loads are north of Portland. One shed has already been dismantled on site; the others are barely used.

 

[MarkHB]

Bulk Cargo is a dying industry here in Portland. Most of the Bulk Cargo business has moved to Searsport and to Eastport. Now with CP and CN operating in Maine, most of the loads are north of Portland. One shed has already been dismantled on site; the others are barely used.

I think my question there is, did the loads diminish because of changing business considerations, or because the hedge fund owners were letting it die by attrition because they wanted to flip the land? And was the moribund ownership of Pan Am Railways (since replaced by CSX) also a factor?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I think my question there is, did the loads diminish because of changing business considerations, or because the hedge fund owners were letting it die by attrition because they wanted to flip the land? And was the moribund ownership of Pan Am Railways (since replaced by CSX) also a factor?

Pan Am definitely didn't give a shit about Cassidy Point or Yard 8 transloads, despite whatever lip service they may have provided when Yard 8 was being built by the state. Yard 8's business prospects were oversold by the state to an absurd degree, so the expectations didn't exactly match the business reality either. CSX has been very quiet about doing anything there, so that may underscore the misfire of expectations. Or they're just waiting for the state to make the first move, not seeing a lot of heavy-lifting of their own moving the needle.

Searsport is shrinking big under CPKC. They do a fraction of the rail business that predecessor Central Maine & Quebec did, and have cut the number of days they operate down there dramatically such that they're only getting down there from Bangor once or twice a week. And they're letting the condition of the Searsport Branch go to shit maintenance-wise, which may telegraph what they think about the long-term future. Since there's no evidence of an offsetting boom in truck traffic to push back against the rail losses, it's hard to conclude that that port is doing well. I don't know about Eastport (although the state has largely backed off its pie-in-sky study fixation with reactivating the rail corridor down there), but it's also hard to believe that that port is really happenin' when the truck route down ME 190 is so bottlenecked by the one-way-in/one-way-out access. It's got a pretty low ceiling as presently constituted...if it's even reaching that ceiling.

The sagging fortunes of the state's bulk cargo ports tend to point to top-down planning misfires and rudderlessness more than anything else. It's something that can be fixed, and thus they shouldn't throw the asset completely away, but Maine really has not shown they have a clue what they're doing with the overall operation of these places.