New Bedford pols bury the hatchet and try again with State Pier redevelopment

Plans to redevelop a central slice of New Bedford’s waterfront have begun to move forward again after a dispute between local politicians last year cast some doubts over the future of the project.

On an industrial waterfront that prides itself for preserving its fishing industry, the New Bedford State Pier has emerged as a unique redevelopment opportunity because of its location at the bottom of downtown New Bedford’s main drag for restaurants and nightlife.

At the pier today, ferries to Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and Cuttyhunk dock next to groundfish draggers and fuel barges, unloading hundreds of passengers into an eight-acre landscape of warehouses and loading bays. 

For more than a decade, local politicians have shared a vision for turning this into a gateway to downtown New Bedford that strikes an elusive balance between working waterfront and quaint seaside tourist attraction. But behind closed doors, they have fought bitterly over who gets a seat at the decision-making table. 

On Monday night, a state agency gathered the stakeholders together at a public meeting for the first time to unveil the latest round of proposals it received from new ventures and current tenants jockeying for a place on the reimagined pier. 

The proposals

A prominent local restaurateur, Steve Silverstein, wants to construct a new “boat to table” restaurant with rooftop dining. The port’s seafood auction, the Buyers and Sellers Exchange, proposed relocating and building a new auction house where visitors could watch fishing boats unload and buy seafood at a retail market. 

A cruise ship company that visits “small towns with big history” wants a piece of the State Pier, too, as do local marine logistics firms seeking access to dock space and an existing warehouse as they service nearby offshore wind farms. The ferries to the islands are also competing to keep their berths on State Pier, promising to renovate or build new accommodations for their passengers.

MassDevelopment, a quasi-public state agency with special flexibility when it comes to managing public procurements, will have its pick of any combination of those bids. But the feasibility of the State Pier’s redevelopment remains as uncertain as it did last year when financing challenges and political infighting derailed a previous agreement to bring in many of the same bidders.

Why the previous redevelopment bid fell apart

Last year, MassDevelopment awarded the lease to State Pier to a consortium of bidders that included the boat-to-table restaurant, the seafood auction, two marine logistics firms and a seafood processing company. 

But after a “due diligence period,” the consortium revised its proposal and demanded that MassDevelopment make structural repairs to the pier and lengthen the 35-year term of the lease.

MassDevelopment later backed out of the agreement, saying it did not have the power to promise those changes. 

Cassie Canastra, director of operations at the seafood auction, said she submitted a similar proposal this year, even though she said she heard nothing from MassDevelopment about whether her concerns would be addressed this time around.

“If I’m going to put the capital up to build a building, I need the bulkhead to be structurally sound,” Canastra said in an interview after Monday’s presentation. 

Canastra said she also remains concerned about the length of the lease. For a projected $15 million construction project, she said 35 years is a short time to recoup an investment or pay off financiers.

“I could try to work around it but anyone here would say longer is better,” Canastra said. 

The previous solicitation also tested the ability of New Bedford’s state legislators to work with MassDevelopment to secure funding for repairs and tweak the one-off legislation that governs the State Pier’s redevelopment, including the length of the lease.

That tension carried through at Monday’s meeting, as state Sen. Mark Montigny described feeling relieved that MassDevelopment’s previous director resigned and was replaced by an interim director.

“I thought, well that’s good, hopefully it’ll be someone we can work with,” Montigny said during his opening remarks. 

He went on to characterize the political climate surrounding the project as a “hornet’s nest.” 

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said last year’s political spat caused some businesses that bid for a place on State Pier last year to drop out. 

“There’s been a lot of contentiousness here and that’s really unfortunate and we’ve had to persist for a long, long time — over three gubernatorial administrations — to get to a point where people are actually having an adult discussion about doing something,” Mitchell said in his remarks at Monday’s meeting. 

“This can has been kicked down the road for decades,” Mitchell said. “For the confidence — the public’s confidence that the state government can actually execute on this project, deadlines have to be put in place.”

A spokesperson for MassDevelopment declined to make the agency’s interim director, Dan O’Connell, available for an interview. The agency has not announced a timeline for selecting winning bids. The agency recorded Monday’s meeting and posted a video of it online.