If all went well, this should have been a great day for Gloucester.
By today, city officials should have been perusing and sharing with residents all sorts of potential development projects for the city's I-4, C-2 waterfront property, with a renewed sense of hope for the revitalization each of them might bring.
But all didn't go well — at all. Some 18 months after the city acquired the long dormant and derelict property, a year after the initial "idea development," and three months after finally, belatedly, getting a formal "Request for Proposals" out to developers, the city has no plans to peruse.
Despite 10 companies expressing enough interest to request the city's "Request for Proposals," Wednesday's submission deadline came and went without a single applicant bidding for the chance to lease the property and develop it — all within constraints of the state's Designated Port Area mandates, and all the while generating at least $70,000 in annual tax revenue for the city.
So the city, of course, must sadly head back to the drawing board.
It's good to hear that city officials — from Mayor Carolyn Kirk to purchasing agent Donna Compton and Community Development Director Sarah Garcia — are already committed to reaching out the companies that called for the RFP packets to find out why they backed off. And Kirk is already ensuring that the Rogers Street site will at least generate some money this year — even if it means just collecting money for parking on it, by far its most prevalent use to date.
That said, however, there are at least three steps the city should actively pursue before letting the site's grass grow even an inch higher:
Press the state, once and for all, to either lift the site from under the clamps of the DPA, or at least restructure the DPA to today's waterfront realities.
Move ahead in creating a city economic development director's position, allowing for more recruitment and persistent outreach toward companies that can make the I-4, C-2 site their home.
Restructure the RFP in a way that does not simply outline what an incoming business must do for the city, but allow for flexibility that can work well for developers as well.
Taking these points one at a time, the first one looms as the most important.
Once viewed as a protection for the city's waterfront against development infringing on our fishing industry and its marine industrial environment, the DPA now stands as an albatross around the city's neck — especially on waterfront development.
The reality is, the fishing industry is seemingly holding its ground — despite the best regulatory efforts of our own job-killing federal fisheries agency. The waterfront now houses two, not just one, seafood auction exchanges along with fish processing facilities and two marine repair yards. It's clear that there is no need to keep the I-4, C-2 site, in particular, under the DPA's marine industrial constraints.
Indeed, the state's Seaport Advisory Council, which steered some $800,000 of the $1.5 million I-4, C-2 purchase price to the city through a grant, has an investment in this site it should want to protect. And keeping the outdated DPA cloud over it has now proven counter-productive, to say the least.
As to the economic development director, Gloucester doesn't simply need a representative to ask interested companies why they backed out of pursuing I-4, C-2; it needs someone who can reach out to companies when they apply, and convey to them just how the site and the city can work for them.
Finally, while we noted at the time the need to convey that the city will only accept proposals that will generate tax dollars, the specific $70,000 guideline, the $10,000 commitment downpayment, and the lack of any flexibility in the leasing requirements may be a deterrent.
With these and perhaps other changes, a second I-4, C-2 recruitment process should open new and even wider doors to the waterfront's economic future.
And there's no time to lose.
