J.B. Brown & Sons pitches Commercial Street rezoning
Portland development company J.B. Brown & Sons is buying 10.5 acres from a railway company on West Commercial Street with plans to develop into a mixed-use area, including offices and residences.
The parcel -- owned by Portland Terminal Co., which operates Pan Am Systems -- lies between Benny's Famous Fried Clams and the Star Match Co. complex, and is upland of Commercial Street with no waterfront footage on the Fore River. J.B. Brown is asking the city to rezone about 8.5 acres of the property between 113 and 201 West Commercial Street to allow mixed-use development. It's currently zoned for marine industrial uses. A portion is also zoned for residential use higher up on the hill, according to Bill Needelman, Portland's senior planner.
Needelman says historically, the land has been industrial, and that the most recent user, the railroad, has been inactive for years.
Vincent Veroneau, president and CEO of J.B. Brown, says the land abuts property his company already owns that is now zoned for mixed-use. "We just thought it was a nice expansion to our holdings," he says. "It offered a reasonable development potential."
When the sale is finalized, and contingent on city approval, Veroneau says he anticipates investing as much as $30 million to develop the former railroad land. He submitted a plan for a three-story office building along with his zoning application as representative of what he could build, if zoning is changed and he is able to secure tenants. The price of the land was not released in city records.
The planning board will hold a public workshop Nov. 8 on J.B. Brown's zoning request and later make its recommendation to the city council.
About nine acres of land on the other side of Commercial Street, west of the Casco Bay Bridge, were recently put on the market by Unitil. The property requires significant cleaning because it's contaminated with coal tar, left over from the days it was the site of a coal gas plant. Unitil acquired the property when it purchased Northern Utilities in 2008, which had inherited the property from the Portland Gas Light Co., according to Alec O'Meara, Unitil's spokesman. O'Meara says the company is "willing to negotiate a variety of options on that parcel," including selling portions of it.
Veroneau says his company's not interested in the shorefront property because the waterside zone doesn't lend itself to development.
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