Harbor zoning plan makes waves in Gloucester

Harbor zoning plan makes waves in Gloucester


GLOUCESTER - In this city of 30,000, it's hard to walk down the street and find someone who doesn't have a connection to the sea. People here view Gloucester's storied harbor with a set of emotions that comes from an intimacy only those who make their living from the ocean understand: The port is both revered and feared.

For more than 400 years it has been a fertile work station for fishermen, while also serving as a reminder of the more than 5,300 who died at sea. But even as the fishing industry fades, the very mention of possible change to the face of the harbor immediately becomes the talk of the town.
Residents and business owners are debating a proposal from Mayor Carolyn Kirk to rezone a spit of property on the harbor's western edge in order to allow the construction of a hotel. Kirk said a hotel could bring in about $500,000 in taxes for the city yearly.
Last Monday, the Planning Board advanced the proposal significantly, recommending the City Council create a special "overlay district." The district would allow for a hotel, hotel condos, and boutiques to be built in an area long known as the Fort. The council will begin debate next month on the matter. Even if it backs the district, the council would still have to approve the proposal for a hotel to be built on the site.
"My focus is to expand the tax base," said Kirk, who wants to generate more revenue from sites in the Fort - a crooked set of narrow streets where two- and three-decker homes have stood alongside fish processing plants and boat docks for about 100 years.
Since the early 20th century, the Fort has been a stronghold for fishing families who trace their heritage to Sicily. Here it's not uncommon to hear diesel trucks idling at midnight or dock workers unloading fish at 4 in the morning.
The proposal has been roundly criticized by residents of the Fort - and some city officials - who said a hotel, condos, and boutiques would forever change the working class feel of the neighborhood.
"People identify with the fishing industry economically, and they also identify with it existentially," said Peter Anastas, a writer and retired social worker. "It's part of who we are in Gloucester. And they also don't want to see the waterfront given over to private yachts. People understand that if the waterfront tips in that way, like Newport has, then that's really the end of the Gloucester that we know and love. So they're very protective of that."
For years, Gloucester has been on the brink of fiscal insolvency: Strict fishing regulations have undercut a once vibrant industry, which now provides less than 2 percent of the city's tax base. Shrinking revenue has forced the city to lay off 77 teachers in the past five years, close a school, and keep just two of its four fire stations open most of the time. In addition, the city is more than $3 million in the red and has about $200 million in infrastructure work that need to be done.

Kirk said the Marriott International hotel chain has expressed interest in building a 100-room hotel that would include condominiums and boutiques on the site of the former Birdseye factory, where flash freezing was invented almost 100 years ago. Kirk also said a hotel is needed because none exists downtown.


But Bill Johnson, who helped create the Fort Community Association, a grass-roots neighborhood group opposed to the hotel, said the new industry would bring unwanted change.
"We're afraid of being gentrified," said Johnson.

Johnson said the neighborhood has rallied around the group, and at Planning Board meetings during the summer and fall, group members wore white T-shirts that read "Save the Fort" and spoke against any zoning change. Johnson said neighbors believe new condominium residents would not tolerate the noise and smells from businesses at all hours of the day.

"In a sense, it's kind of a snob zoning process. It will completely change the character of the Fort," said Planning Board member Michael Rubin, who cast the sole opposing vote in Monday's 6-to-1 board decision. "When you do the gentrifying stuff, the boutique shopping and the hotel and the very upscale residential, you drive out anything related to blue collar work."

Former Gloucester mayor and current City Council president Bruce Tobey called the hotel proposal "utterly incongruous."
"The Fort is unique. It's an industrial park wrapped around a residential zone, and the key is to rationalize what's there and not make it worse by grafting on the kind of tourism element," he said.
Kirk, however, said a hotel and condos would not upset the balance of the neighborhood.
"I call it progress," said Kirk, adding that a hotel would be a good fit for the Fort, which already has mixed use.

Kirk also downplayed talk of gentrification. "That's a theoretical statement playing on people's fears," she said. "Revitalizing an area that's in disrepair, in terms of that particular property that is targeted for the hotel, is a positive step for the city."
As residents debate the merits of a downtown hotel, the conversation has expanded to the future of the whole waterfront. Nearly all of the harbor - except for the area around the former Birdseye factory - is considered a Designated Port Area by the state and can be only used for marine industrial related uses. Kirk said that designation has depressed property values, and she wants to redraw the boundaries to allow such investment as high-tech marine-related research companies, restaurants, and retail shops.

Joey Ciaramitaro and Scott Memhard hope Kirk follows through with the changes. Ciaramitaro, who owns a lobster retail business and wants to rebuild a dock on his property, said the Designated Port Area label has been a stranglehold on his business. Memhard, who owns Cape Pond Ice, said he sells just 9 tons of ice a day - down from 300 tons in the '80s - because of the downturn in fishing. He wants to rent out space for a restaurant or an apartment - two uses that are not allowed under the port area designation.

He likened the romanticism some have for the harbor to a sacred cow. "It has been for a long time, but the cow is getting really skinny right now - emaciated," he said.