A group of developers led by Robert Baldacci is attempting to organize the owners of working waterfront property in Portland in support of commercial waterfront development, according to the Portland Press Herald.
The group, which calls itself the Portland Waterfront Preservation Coalition, will hold an introductory meeting tomorrow evening and has invited all the owners of the city’s piers to attend. Baldacci and the other organizers, which include Ronald Ward and David Cohan, are not pitching specific development plans for the waterfront, but said now is the time to look at how “appropriate and rational development” could help pay for the upkeep of the piers in the city and help preserve the working waterfront, according to the paper. Baldacci and Ward were both members of the Ocean Properties team that lost its bid to develop the Maine State Pier on Portland’s waterfront.
However, there are some skeptics. City Councilor David Marshall told the Press Herald the group’s use of the word “preservation” in its name doesn’t fool him. “If it looks a like a development team and it sounds like a development team, it’s still a development team,” Marshall told the paper.
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