All of a sudden, Commercial Street is hot property.
A waterfront parcel at 46-52 Commercial, opposite the Chamber of Commerce building, just sold for $1.5 million, more than twice what a speculator paid for it just two years ago.
And just across the street and a bit south, a development team for Marriott Hotels and Resorts has teamed with landowner Peter Maggio, and is itching to begin permitting and site work on a $30-million, 120-room hotel.
The project, Maggio told the Times yesterday, is contingent on two developments: the city's removing his real estate from the marine industrial zone that includes the entire Fort peninsula and "cleaning up the street and the sidewalks."
A step in that direction, Maggio said, was the acquisition earlier this month of the parcel on Commercial across the street from the Chamber by Intershell, a seafood distributor that specializes in sushi and is now located on Harbor Loop. Intershell intends to spruce up the desolate, industrial-green painted property, reopen the cold storage warehouse for its fresh fish products and convert a small building at the front into a seafood market.
"The better looking the property," said Intershell owner Marty Rome, "the more business that comes in."
Rome said his new site will be commercial and it won't be fancy, but that "will be cool" for the hotel, said Maggio. "Commercial property in a working port — that's the city's cachet," he said. Maggio's family has been involved in Gloucester's waterfront industry for 60 years, primarily in cold storage.
The hotel site, which in 2006 drew interest from Boston hotel developer Frank Keefe, was a marine industrial site throughout most of the 20th century.
It was where Clarence Birdseye perfected the frozen fish process and has his factory, where O'Donnel-Usen was based, and afterward where Good Harbor Fillet got its start as an innovator in processed fish.
Maggio's property is also roughly on the site of a 19th century summer vacation hotel.
Maggio said he and his development partner (whom he declined to identify) have met twice with Mayor Carolyn Kirk. He said she asked their permission to announce the possible venture to an organizing meeting for the campaign to loosen restrictions on waterfront development.
While that will be a problem for much of the Inner Harbor, it doesn't effect Maggio's site, which is adjacent to Pavilion Beach and the Outer Harbor. The Inner Harbor waterfront is part of the Designated Port Area, established by the state.
"Marriott Corp. has approved this site for a hotel," she announced.
She also said the company suggested creating a "feeder system" via water shuttle to allow guests at the Marriott Long Wharf in Boston and the future Marriott in Gloucester to split their stays.
The option of splitting a visit between Boston and Gloucester would give the Long Wharf a marketing appeal that none of the other big flag hotels in Boston can match.
Maggio's property has a distinct advantage over all other possible hotel sites on the Gloucester waterfront. It is just outside the Designated Port Area and thus not subject to the state's regulatory authority. The state law, intended to preserve working waterfront areas, bars, hotels and any form of residence inside DPAs.
I-4, C-2, the two-acre garden of weeds between the Building Center and the Gloucester House, is inside the DPA, which helps explain why it's remained vacant since the 1960s.
So only the city's Marine Industrial zoning bars the hotel Maggio and his partner would like to build, and the city can change zoning relatively quickly.
Last year, the Planning Board and City Council managed to rezone on request the property purchased by Sam Park for Gloucester Crossing and the old Gloucester Drive-in site on which DeMoulas intends to put a supermarket.
Kirk said she was opposed to "spot zoning" to help Maggio. "I'm pushing back hard on that," she told the Times. Instead, she said she wanted to see the entire Fort and the Commercial Street connector rezoned in a way that satisfies the city's long-term interests.
Maggio said he and his partners have budgeted $900,000 for site work and permitting, but won't start until the city changes the zoning.
He said the plan is for a 120-room hotel with a 5,000-7,000 square foot restaurant and "a residential component," which is considered essential to the business plan of nearly all resort hotels, especially those in markets such as this one, that is highly seasonal.
The full development was "roughed out" at $28 million to $35 million. "There are no hard numbers," said Maggio, 64.
He purchased the site in 1983 from ConAgra, which had acquired O'Donnell-Usen before closing down the plant on Commercial Street.
