Gloucester Daily Times
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/
Published: January 29, 2007
By Richard Gaines
Staff writer
Mike Dean
Staff photoMarine terminal on schedule for spring completion bringing new life to the waterfront
Mike Dean/Staff photo - What will be a view of Gloucester"s Inner Harbor is wrapped in blue tarps at the site of the new cruise terminal at Rowe Wharf. The new terminal will provide services for visiting cruise ships.
Work is proceeding apace on a $6 million marine terminal and function hall now scheduled to open this spring and solidify the cruise ship connection the city tested and approved in the last two autumns.
"This is new, new, new," Mayor John Bell said. "Lots of people never thought this would happen."
The enterprise, named CruisePort Gloucester by developer Frank Elliott, will include 180 parking spaces and operate on two levels - dock and dance.
The dock level will house a 2,500-square-foot legal processing center for the Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security and travelers transferring to and from cruise ships, such as the Seabourn Pride, the ultra high-end carrier that made two visits to Gloucester last fall and is committed to visit again for the 2007 season.
The upper dance level will include a 6,500-square-foot ballroom with hardwood floors, a 2,400-square-foot kitchen for caterers and multiple panoramic views of the harbor all the way to the Paint Factory.
Elliott's representative, Peter Van Ness, yesterday said the building will be operating by Memorial Day when a three-day festival now being organized will feature the schooner Adventure, which is winter-wrapped at the pier but by then will be refitted with masts.
Van Ness said the festival's theme will be "authentic Gloucester" and benefit seArts and the Adventure.
"Together, fishing and arts are siblings that have always shared the best room in the house," Van Ness said.
Visitors to the terminal's opening will be given tours of the Adventure, the last of the Gloucester fishing schooners, which is being painstakingly reconstructed in a true revival.
When Elliott obtained the city's permission to raze two unused storage buildings at Rowe Square in 2004, there were many in the city who doubted he would ever build his cruise terminal, and doubted further that cruise ships would come.
Elliott made good on his promises to bring small-port cruisers to visit Gloucester - and also drew visits from Holland America's big ships in the past two years. And with a major assist from a silent partner, Elliott broke ground last fall on the terminal the cruise lines consider essential for making this port a permanent call on their itineraries.
His terminal and function hall will mark the first major nonfishing-related construction on the waterfront in a generation and will be matched in short order by Rockport National Bank's arrival at the head of the harbor where F.W. Webb long wholesaled plumbing supplies.
F.W. Webb has built a new distribution center and showroom in Blackburn Industrial Park.
Bell said he believes the cruise terminal will spark water transportation connections based in Gloucester to fill the void created by federal regulation of fishing and an expected decommissioning of some of the Gloucester fleet's 150 boats.
Along with cruise ships bouncing from small port to small port up and down the Gulf of Maine, Bell said he sees the terminal creating opportunities for "water shuttles and ferries to Provincetown, Nova Scotia" and other day-trip ports.
"This (terminal) is replacing the dead zone without displacing anyone," Bell said.
Elsewhere, the waterfront remains in a state of uncertainty with the recent permitting of two liquefied natural gas terminals seven and 13 miles offshore and less fishing a virtual certainty.
An updated harbor plan featuring some loosening of zoning that leaves nonmarine uses virtually forbidden was delivered to the city last summer. But with property owners nearly unanimous in opposition and urging less regulation, the plan has not been introduced for hearings and City Council action.
Bell, who holds the draft harbor plan, and City Council President James Destino, have yet to decide how to proceed on the rezoning and redefining uses for waterfront property.
Destino said he hoped to "collect the cards, reshuffle the deck and a deal a new hand" on the harbor plan and other issues that were unresolved last year.
The quest for a waterfront hotel, featured in Bell's inaugural address in January 2006, remains elusive. Boston developer Frank Keefe has said his interest in building one in Gloucester remains unchanged even after negotiations with Peter Maggio over Maggio's property on the west side of Commercial Street fell through.
Keefe and his partners completed the Hotel Commonwealth at the start of the decade to spark a dramatic revival of Boston's Kenmore Square.
Sue Decanolis, who has been booking functions for Elliott, said the presence of a hotel would be a boon, and Van Ness said a hotel would cement the port as a preferred option for "turnarounds" - the locations selected for the start and end of cruises.
Without a hotel, Seabourn last fall bused its guests between its Seabourn Pride cruise ship and Boston hotels for their two fall turnarounds in Gloucester.
The dock level customs and processing terminal room, Van Ness said, will be wireless and interactive - featuring computers for entertainment searches and bookings for lodging and restaurants. A plasma screen will broadcast a program of events and notices.