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Study Calls Portland’s Crowded Waterfront An ‘Existential Threat’ To Marine Industries

Fred Bever
/
Maine Public
A traffic study that is in the works is calling the situation an "existential threat" to the city's marine industries, and lobstermen seem to agree.

Anxiety is growing in Portland’s lobstering community over the city's increasingly crowded waterfront. A traffic study that is in the works is calling the situation an "existential threat" to the city's marine industries, and lobstermen seem to agree.

Willis Spear fishes 800 traps from a Commercial Street wharf that also houses two restaurants, the Harbor fish market, and a major bait fish dealer. He says city officials are approving new developments too quickly, adding more and more cars to the downtown mix.

"The waterfront is the crown jewels that have to be sold off in order to pay for the tax base,” says Spear. “Everybody wants to be here, everybody wants to be — hotels, condominiums."

Portland and the Greater Portland Council of Governments are financing a new traffic study of the busy district. Their request for proposals says that worsening congestion threatens the loss of Commercial Street as a functional industrial corridor.

This story was originally published July 12, 2018 at 5:24 p.m. ET.

A Columbia University graduate, Fred began his journalism career as a print reporter in Vermont, then came to Maine Public in 2001 as its political reporter, as well as serving as a host for a variety of Maine Public Radio and Maine Public Television programs. Fred later went on to become news director for New England Public Radio in Western Massachusetts and worked as a freelancer for National Public Radio and a number of regional public radio stations, including WBUR in Boston and NHPR in New Hampshire.