MAINE PUBLIC • January 4, 2022
Gov. Janet Mills and an array of stakeholders convened on Portland's waterfront today to celebrate the preservation of an important wharf for marine enterprises. The Union Wharf is a wide, paved, well-maintained pavilion that divides the mostly tourist-oriented development of Portland's eastern waterfront from the more purely marine-focused businesses to the west. "The specter of seeing the wharf bought up by a developer was a grave concern for all of us," said Don Perkins, CEO of the Gulf of Maine Marine Research Institute. He and others tried to find a buyer that would be committed to preserving the city's remaining working waterfront. When that failed, GMRI's board decided to add a new role to the institute's mission: civic-minded landlord. "So why did we do it? Because 25 miles of working waterfront along the coast of Maine are finite and threatened by a hot real estate market,” Perkins said.