BELFAST – The investment firm proposing to develop the former Stinson Seafoods sardine plant on the city’s waterfront wants to demolish the crumbling factory and double the number of condominiums allowed under the original plan.

Matthew Landau of Connecticut-based Westport Capital Partners and his architect, Benedict Walter of CWS in Portland outlined their plans before a large crowd at the University of Maine Hutchinson Center Wednesday night. Members of various city boards and committees and a curious public turned out in numbers to hear the proposal.

The firm wants to replace the former Wakeag Landing plan that was halted a year ago when developer Tom Roberts ran into financial problems. Landau and Walter both stressed that the design of the former Wakeag Landing plan was unworkable and needed to be scrapped.

In order to be marketable, they said, the old factory would need to be leveled and the residences built from scratch. The only building on the site that would be retained is a metal-sided warehouse that would be used for boat storage and a restaurant.

They said that while they would retain the same basic layout, the project would need to grow from the 21 residences proposed by Roberts’ Wakeag project to 40 under the updated plan.

“A lot of the previous plan was unworkable,” Walter told the crowd. “Which is probably why it ended as it did.”

Along with doubling the number of condos, the new plan also calls for extending the height of the four 10-residential-unit buildings from 45 to 50 feet. In return for the added height, the developers will create a “view corridor” from Front Street to Belfast Harbor that was not in the original plan. A public walkway through the project along the route of the former Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad tracks was included in the new plan.

“It’s a little bit more pedestrian oriented,” Walter said.

The project also would retain the 62 boat slips and marina-boat storage area as originally planned. Landau said the firm would be happy to have Wayfarer Marine marina operate it but that it was too early in the process to begin negotiations with the Camden company.

Landau described Westport Capital Partners as a private equity firm that has been involved in more than $2 billion worth of development projects over the last 15 years. He said the firm’s investors are college endowments, pension funs and wealthy individuals.

“We are an entrepreneurial firm,” Landau said. “We bring a good deal of expertise to this project. … We’ve done an awful lot of projects on the water, that’s sort of the specialty of Westport Properties.”

Besides its Connecticut base, the company also has offices in Los Angeles. The company has developed major projects from New York to Hawaii. Many were residential-marina developments, he said. Slides were shown of some of the firm’s projects.

“We did quality work there and that’s what we intend to do here,” engineer George Pray said referring to the Turtle Bay Resort project in Oahu, Hawaii.

As was the case with the original Wakeag Landing project, the developers will have to receive permit approval under the city’s Contract Rezoning statutes. That means that the proposal will have to pass muster with a number of city boards, including but not limited to the harbor committee and planning board.

Firm representatives said they would like to get the process rolling by next month and hoped to have permits by summer. They said they expected construction would take a year. Landau speculated that the condos could sell in the $700,000 price range but that the market would set the price. He said once the company began work, it would not stop until the project was finished.

“This is going to be a finished project, not something half-baked that doesn’t get concluded,” Landau said.