Two firms submit plans for city waterfront

BANGOR – Two New England-based firms have submitted proposals to develop a stretch of riverfront land owned by the city.

City officials Thursday unveiled the plans from Ocean Properties Ltd. of Portsmouth, N.H., and the Conroy Development Co. of Greenwich, Conn.

Stan Moses, assistant director of the city’s Department of Community and Economic Development, said that interest from the two accomplished developers boded well for the city’s hopes of turning the once-industrial waterfront into a retail center connecting downtown and Bass Park.

“It’s heartening to know that after all the planning, all the research and all the work, that we can attract such high-quality proposals,” Moses said Thursday. “It speaks to the community’s confidence in the continued growth of this area and the city.”

The Ocean Properties plan proposes a full-service 180-room, four- to five-story branded hotel with an in-house restaurant, conference and meeting room space, indoor swimming pool and exercise facility, and would serve as the headquarters hotel for a proposed conference facility for the site.

Under the plan, the hotel would be developed and built over a 14- to 16-month period at a cost of about $18 million. The hotel would also be operated by Ocean Properties, a company owned by Thomas Walsh, a hotel operator with Bangor ties.

Walsh’s company also owns the 230-acre Samoset Resort in Rockport as well as between 80 and 90 hotels around the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.

While the Ocean Properties plan deals only with the hotel, the Conroy Development plan includes the entire 36 acres of city-owned property between Main Street and the Penobscot River.

The Conroy proposal, named River Place, includes a 250-room, high-end hotel, a 175-room economy hotel, up to three office buildings, a 60,000-square-foot retail and restaurant pavilion and a 30,000-square-foot nautical center adjacent to marina facilities.

The proposal assumes the city’s development of a conference center, a parking structure, riverfront trails and amenities and the private development of a riverside amphitheater.

The total Conroy plan would cost more than $146 million, about $40 million of which would come from public funds. The remaining $106 million would come from private investment, according to Moses.

The city already has about $15 million in state, federal and private funds to develop the area.

Included in that figure is $3 million from Bangor businessman Chip Hutchins to construct the amphitheater.

City crews have worked for years to clear the area in anticipation of the development, most recently working to replace the deteriorating wooden bulkhead with steel.

The City Council will now

evaluate the proposals with the aim of reaching a development agreement within the next few months, according to city officials.

“We’ll want to sit down with both of them,” Bangor Mayor John Rohman said Thursday. “These are high-quality proposals and I’m excited about them.

“We have to capitalize on the upturn in the economy, and now is the time to move on this,” Rohman continued. “I’d be very surprised if we didn’t see some significant development down there in the next few years.”