🔒Broadway opening might be key to making South Portland area more accessible

Cushing Point in South Portland has long been a development waiting to happen. The fact that much of it has been empty since the its sprawling shipyards were largely dismantled in the decades after World War II has a lot to do with traffic access.

The only way to get to the end of the peninsula is two-lane Broadway, which runs through a tight, mostly residential neighborhood before it dead-ends at a tangle of narrow streets, Bug Light Park, marinas and Southern Maine Community College.

But development is coming, and so is the rising sea that threatens the peninsula. Some of the peninsula was once wetlands filled in to accommodate the shipyards that supplied the U.S. Navy during the war. The challenge, planners say, is to figure out how to make the area more accessible for development, while making it work better for residents. And accomplishing that with a road that cannot get any wider.

The effort to solve the puzzle is starting this fall, with a traffic study by the city, Greater Portland Council of Governments, and the developer, PK Realty Management.

“Broadway can only take so much, and we still don’t have an answer for how much it can take,” says South Portland’s planning director, Milan Nevajda, who started his job April 21.

When that answer comes, it will help guide development of 30 acres that PK Realty bought in November 2018.

“It will be the framework for everything,” says Jennifer Packard, president of PK Realty and manager of the Liberty Shipyard Project.

The $82,000 study is being paid largely by Portland Area Comprehensive Transit System, part of Greater Portland Council of Governments, with South Portland providing a $36,000 local match.

Push and pull

Answers are still a ways away. The process has just started, with an initial public hearing planned for Nov. 9, and another one planned for March. But planners are working from some basic ideas, Nevajda says.

Focus areas are technical fixes, like synching traffic lights; making the area more pedestrian and bicycle friendly; making public bus use more efficient; and the feasibility of marine transport between the Bug Light area and Portland.

Nevajda says there is a push and pull when trying to make traffic move more efficiently while also making the corridor more welcoming for bicycling and pedestrians. But making all those work is necessary, given the fact the roadway itself can’t be widened.

One positive is the Greenbelt, a bike and walkway built on a former narrow gauge rail line. In the Cushing Point area, much of it runs along the waterfront. Making it more accessible all along Broadway will be part of the study.

Public input is key

Andrew Clark, regional transportation director at Greater Portland Council of Governments, says the study will help inform the regional Destination 2040 traffic study as well.

Even if the road could be widened, it wouldn’t necessarily be the best option. “That’s not the way we should address these problems anymore,” he says.

The aim is to optimize traffic safety and ease, accommodate coming development and climate change issues and maintain the character of the neighborhoods nearby, including Ferry Village and Willard Square, the planners say.

Public input is a key factor to the study, Clark says.

“We have to know people’s real experience,” he says. “There’s not anything in particular we’re hoping to hear, it’s just good to hear” from people.

Packard, too, says the direction of development on the property PK Realty bought in 2018 also will rely on public input.

“We’re reaching out into the neighborhoods,” she says. “We want to work with people.”

The developer is in no big rush to put a plan in place. They’ve just completed a brownfields assessment and are preparing to apply for funding to clean up a portion of the site.

“We’re trying to make sure the whole site is cleaned up to the residential level if at all possible,” Packard says.

Development could include “a bunch of mixed uses.” The site is in the shipyard zoning district, which allows commercial enterprises like hotels and restaurants, office uses, as well as light industrial and marine.

PK Realty specializes in commercial and industrial space, and when the company bought the site, Packard told Mainebiz that the industrial nature, as well as the prime waterfront location, made the property attractive, and rare.

There are a handful of buildings on the mostly empty site, with a dozen businesses, including axe maker Brant & Cochran, Portland Barrel Co., Keeley Crane Service, PODS and Sea Rose Trap Co. Packard says those businesses will stay.

Packard says that the focus on enhanced pedestrian and bicycle access along Broadway will fit in the plans to make the development more welcoming to those uses, while keeping cars on the periphery.

Marine transport to Portland

So far, the focus of the study that’s gotten the most attention is ferry service between South Portland and Portland.

The study is only looking at the feasibility, not specifics. While it may be enticing to envision taking a ferry trip across the harbor to the Portland peninsula, rather than driving across the Casco Bay Bridge and finding parking, the reality is more complicated.

“We’re not of the opinion that ‘If you build it, they will come,’” says Nevajda. Who “they” are is only one of the questions. Would commuters use it? Tourists? Shoppers? How much would people pay?

“We don’t want to shoot ourselves in the foot,” he says.

Clark agrees. “There’s pretty significant capital involved, in terms of a vessel, real estate, a place to put the boat. [Portland’s waterfront] is pretty crowded.”

If ferry service were to happen, which was how people got across the bay for more than two centuries before the first bridge across was built, it would likely be a smaller boat than the Casco Bay Lines ferries people are used to seeing plow the harbor.

Packard says ferry service would also have an impact on development plans, with businesses or services that would complement it or cater to those using it.

But she, too, takes a cautious approach. “It’s a super romantic idea,” that would be a mistake it if no one used it.

First, the study

The feasibility of ferry service, and what other ideas and action items will come out of the study are in the future. First, the study has to happen.

Nevajda says the sidewalks, where they exist are narrow and not in great shape. There aren’t enough crosswalks, particularly in the right places. There isn’t a consistent option for those riding bikes He’s most interested in those issues. Working to improve them will help improve quality of life and sustainability in the community.

“As a planner, that the stuff I know has long-term benefits,” he says.

Determining what the traffic issues are, how they will change and how the other elements fit in, is the larger issue.

And all of that comes with the looming reality of climate change. Portland and South Portland in September released the One Climate Future report, which looks at how the two cities will mitigate, and adapt to, climate change.

“That’s a huge piece of this,” Nevajda says. Rising seal levels, more storms, greater severity of storms, more pests related to warmer weather will all affect how people live and move.

“There are a lot of layers to this, and we need to look at all of them,” he says.