The long-term future of Gloucester's most famous vacant lot may not be as the site of a marine aquarium and research center — or as a regular concert venue, despite Sunday night's glowing Celebrate Gloucester success.
But it is good to see an entrepreneurial spirit growing for the 2-acre I-4,C-2 parcel off Rogers Street.
And Ward 1 Councilor Paul McGeary's vision for the site, which he sees as a job creator, educational tool and tourist attraction, should prompt at least two responses at the local and regional level:
It should prompt Mayor Carolyn Kirk to hasten her plan to solicit other development proposals for the site. Kirk has promised that the plan will be coming before the end of the week.
It should also prompt the city's State House delegation — Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, and Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante, D-Gloucester — to once again step up their advocacy for the city and demand more flexibility from state officials on an outdated policy based on the delusion that the harbor should only be viewed as a bustling industrial fishing port, and that marine industrial uses should be the only cards in its future.
McGeary's plan is the first presented since the city acquired the parcel last spring for $1.5 million. The councilor said he was inspired by other aquariums in Monterey Bay, Calif., Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tenn.
He acknowledges the hurdles of such an undertaking.
One is financial — the aquariums in those other states were built with the help of major benefactors, and are sustained in part by private donations. McGeary is on the hunt for those with deep pockets. But if he doesn't find any, the aquarium is simply not a realistic option.
The other hurdle, however, is legal — and it's one that should simply not be a factor.
Lest any of us forget, the site is within the state-regulated Designated Port Area, which is designed to preserve marine industrial harbor infrastructure.
That in itself is absurd. The state has to know that the federal government itself, through fishing regulation, has reduced the local fishing fleet and therefore the harbor fishing industry to less than 40 percent of what it once was.
And despite the growing fish against those regulations today — and the hopes for overturning years of wrongful enforcement for which fishermen must yet be repaid — even the best foreseeable result may be the survival and revitalized success of the industry and the independent boats and related industry businesses we wee today, not a major expansion of it,
Yet the state is still insisting that property be used to service an industry that is no longer big enough to use it, and probably never will be again. That makes about as much sense as allowing only housing development where nobody is allowed to live.
The DPA designation has already been amended to allow up to half of a property to be used for "supporting uses" of marine industrial.
But according to a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection, an aquarium is not considered supportive of marine industrial uses.
Excuse us? An aquarium — which could provide all sorts of marine educational resources for already-present research organizations like the Ocean Alliance and Whale Center of New England — doesn't support marine industrial use?
That seems patently absurd. And this absurdity does not apply only to McGeary's proposal, of course, but to the idea of a potential community concert site, or any other proposal that comes to the city regarding the valuable and versatile waterfront site.
Gloucester needs economic growth. And its options in pursuing that growth should not be limited by outdated state mandates that still provide too narrow a window for the city's future,
Yes, the fishing industry and its related waterfront businesses are a big part of Gloucester's economy.
But it is not — and will never be — the only part, especially when it comes to developing this city-owned hub property on its harbor.
It's past time for the state to stop pretending — and mandating — that it will. And it's high time Gloucester had the chains lifted from a site that truly has limitless potential for the future.
