20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 19

Portland Maine waterfront with proposed new buildings in black strengthening the existing piers as streets fabric, etc.

(Continuing with my July 2010 Maine Sunday Telegram article proposing a blueprint for a successful approach to development on Portland's waterfront...) Using historical analysis combined with a form-based approach, I suggested we treat the piers as streets with buildings along the sides of the piers. Using the Thomas block as an example of how to build on that side of Commercial we could make a continuous 4 story wall of mixed use space with storefronts at grade. Then the piers could have a street running down the middle and buildings on the sides with waterfront use on the pier level and provide as much public access as possible. Great read for those who care about building better places to live especially those with waterfronts. Here's the article text second half:

...It is clear the most crucial aspect regarding development on the piers is that a street run down the middle of them that imitates the streets of the Old Port. This means sidewalks on both sides, or a totally pedestrian street wide enough to drive down and walk alongside moving cars and nothing at the end of the pier at the end of these ‘streets’ to block the view. These ‘streets should be mandated public access corridors as the piers are private property. Buildings could line both sides of these streets to a height of 2 or 3 stories without blocking out too much sunshine or overwhelming the ‘feel’ of the old established building fabric. Buildings should be required to build to the sidewalk edges to make the ‘walls’ to these street ‘hallways’. Open air breaks in these buildings for view and pedestrian access should occur at mandated intervals to allow people to see the ocean from the ‘street’, walk to the pier’s long edges from the street, and to break up the potentially long building walls. It is this human scaled pre-industrial fabric that generates the livability we enjoy and thus, attracts the income we depend on.

Since ALL uses except marine ones can be accommodated anywhere else, it is natural that the ground floors of most space on piers beyond the depth of a Thomas block size building be reserved for marine use only. Piers are built to function as a way to allow boats to pull up alongside them- for marine use. Once that space is handed over to non-marine use, the whole logic of the city begins to fall apart and our sense of place unravels. We passed the marine only zoning law because we panicked when Chandler’s private condominiums and gated street went up. We instinctively knew the whole city as a place was at risk. Seafood restaurants with moderate income menus like the Porthole and Becky’s feel natural to us on the ground floor as does a fish market. It is the ground floor of the buildings that we interact with and which provide us with a sense of place. On the other hand, I’m not sure it makes much difference on the floors above whether there are restaurants, offices or concert halls. The exception is residential which can cause problems when condo owners act naturally territorial leading to lawsuits and which cannot be changed to a different use if the public changes the zoning. There must be a way for property owners to make a deserving profit while the greater good and Portland’s long-term interests are preserved.

Believe it or not this is a pier- Custom House Wharf.

If we write the zoning in such a way as to get the street space the way we want and the form of the buildings similarly creating that street space- public space- then Portland will always be the best experience we can get. This means writing a form-based code instead of a function based code. Zoning language should emphasize that use requirements may change to accommodate public interest but that building form requirements will stay. This actually stabilizes the owner’s long-term viability as they can build the form and fill it with whatever use is approved at any point in time.

Finally, the actual pier edges running along the sides should be well thought out to allow a certain amount of public strolling. This is easy if an 8 foot strip along the water is open for walking along, exceptions made for actual work such as unloading fish, etc., which would pose a danger to the public. Thus, the public could walk along most of the waterfront edge for a magnificent experience and lure tenants better than any brochure owners could come up with.

So we see that the solutions to our needs at our waterfront are simple: a street down the middle with no building to block the end view; buildings like Thomas Block along Commercial Street with storefront on ground floor; a human building height along piers; access to the edges; marine only ground floors; and buildings on either side of the ‘street’ that meet the sidewalks.

It is the unique street space that we love in our city. Pier streets have always been Portland’s essence.

Michael Belleau is principal of Michael Belleau Architect, an architecture and urban planning firm in Portland. He has worked since 1992 on Portland urban design issues, writing many articles for this paper. He is a fourth generation Mainer, former fisherman and Portland resident and can be reached at www.michaelbelleau.com or his blog: www.mainearchitecture.blogspot.com.

20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 18

Historically Portland's piers acted as extensions of the streets with buildings on both sides only with water underneath.

In 2010 Portland Maine's waterfront code and future was a big topic and having analyzed it from the beginning of my career, I wrote this July 2010 Maine Sunday Telegram article to lay down a blueprint for a successful approach to development there. Using that same analysis as my thesis combined with a form-based approach I suggested we treat the piers as streets with buildings along the sides of the piers. Great read for those who care about building better places to live especially those with waterfronts. Here's the article text first half:

My July 2010 article and excerpt.

 Portland Piers Are Streets

By Michael Belleau copyright 2010

Special to the Maine Sunday Telegram

July 7, 2010

When we walk down to Portland’s waterfront and stroll through the fabric of the Old Port or meander along Commercial Street, our senses are focused inevitably on the water. The smell of the ocean when the weather warms up and the sounds of boats and birds beckon but the site of the water is what we yearn for. Our visual connection to this place is constantly broken by buildings and then re-established through view corridors. Views from a distance are balanced by walkways along the water’s edge. This variety of water view experiences is what makes Portland itself a distinct place. In order to answer the question of how to build here we need not get too complicated. We just need to acknowledge the deep structure formed by history here that has worked all along.

A map of Portland in 1690 shows just three roads: one along the shore (Fore St.), one going from this one up hill (India St. now), to one along ridge (Congress St. now). When Captain Moet burned the city down in 1775 piers had begun to sprout along the waterfront, a few of them aligned with the streets coming down from the spine of Congress Street. By 1823 many more piers had sprung up, most of which were extensions of the cities street fabric coming down from Congress Street, across Middle and Fore and out into the harbor. Starting at the west end and moving east we can see streets becoming piers at the streets State, Anne, High, Center, Cotton, Cross, Union (the largest wharf, Union Wharf), Plum, Exchange, Market, Silver, Willow, Deer, Moose, Tyng, King (India), Hancock and Monitor. Tyng Street actually went out into the water as a pier and came to an end at an ‘L’ intersection over the water with Thames Street’s pier extension!

As these piers grew longer they began to differ little from the same streets on land with rows of buildings along both sides of a street at the center of the wharfs except the back of the buildings were at the waters edge with ships tied up. The street fabric of Portland was one of the city running right out into the sea.

The Portland experience was of walking down a street seeing the water at the end, and as you approached that end, glimpsing the water on both sides between buildings and realizing you were over the water. If you walked along the waterfront down and between wharfs you could experience a myriad of building forms, views, wharf edge depths, site lines, people, ships, etc. However, as with many human scaled environments, the Industrial Revolution inadvertently removed a large portion of this experience.

In 1852 the railroad tracks to Montreal were laid across the wharfs out in the water close to land. This line of tracks became Commercial Street when the water between the tracks and Fore Street was filled in. The crenellated outline of the waterfront edge was replaced by a monotonous straight one. Piers still multiplied (I count 36 total from 1866 map) and grew further into the harbor while railroad track spurs ran out down the piers to expedite the movement of goods. The new tracks divided the waterfront into a city side and a wharf side. You knew if you were out in the water and if you were not because you had to cross the monotonous tracks first. Mystery and intrigue, essential components to the heightened urban visual and spatial human experience began to evaporate.

Now, with trains long gone, we see the gradual restoration of the street fabric of Portland especially down at the east end of the waterfront. Commercial Street has become a sort of Main Street of the waterfront area. 100 Commercial St., the Thomas Block, exemplifies the kind of building form we generally enjoy along the water side of this street. At four stories it is not too tall, curves along the sidewalk forming a wall to enclose the street so that we experience the street as an outdoor public room, and has storefronts at ground level to engage the pedestrian and provide a sense of safety and activity. We can use this building as a model for development along the water side of Commercial Street to the depth of the Thomas Block. It is the building overall form that we wish to guide to meet our collective needs, not strictly the use.

Next post will have rest of article and diagram explaining concept.

20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 7

"Arc of a Sturgeon" Casco Bay Bridge sketch

In spring 1992 George Neavoll, the Editor at the Press Herald, didn’t like the proposed new Casco Bay Bridge which looked like just a highway over the water so he called for sketches from the readership. I proposed a big arch thinking of St. Louis and called it ARC OF A STURGEON. He published 3 of the sketches with mine at the top stating:

"I rather like the top design, myself, submitted by M. Belleau of Portland. When I learned he wears a T-shirt with the Einstein quote, 'Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds,' I thought to myself, this is my kind of guy."

Portland Press Herald snippet.

And no drawbridge.

20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 6

Diagram showing potential new plazas as red dots in string along Congress St. 

and red arrows showing reconnecting streets.

Continuing previous blog entry discussion around my 1992 article, "Portland: Back to the Future":

I advised we could create string of plazas along Congress Street up to the Eastern Prom to make a seamless pedestrian experience using the existing Longfellow Square- Congress Square- Monument Square sequence to build upon. Thus, pedestrians would always be moving from one great public space to another.

(from the article:) "This means: sidewalks of brick with lampposts, benches and trees; buildings with ground-level shops and architecture that engages the passer-by; street widths that allow for across-the-street conversations and window shopping; plazas at every square and major junction, like Monument Square; a master plan of linked plazas along Congress Street that continue up to the Eastern Promenade and down to the Greyhound station as well as along Commercial Street and into every pocket of the city."

In addition, the "urban renewal" created in 1960's by the removal of delicate urban fabric for the Franklin Street Arterial smack in the middle of the peninsula and the similar destruction of building and streets by the Spring Street arterial I suggested back then, should be repaired. These gashes in the urban street and building fabric of the city required careful stitching back together. The red arrows in diagram above show my suggestion back then to reconnect all the cutoff streets to establish proper urban block sizes.

I offered this example for how to start revitalizing the at the time poor Munjoy Hill area which would be part of a Congress Street plaza sequence as noted above:

"Munjoy Hill would be a good starting point for the definition of communities. A central plaza, office building, cultural center, and light-industrial facility would be a good start. With a clear, long-term development plan, banks might loan on a longer time frame."

And finally at the end of the article I suggested Portland could use an economic symbol, what is called "brand" now to communicate world wide:

"In addition to egalitarian zoning and development, it is necessary to provide a commercial symbol to anchor Portland’s place in the global community.

Just as Zurich has banking, Oslo has shipping, and Houston has oil, Portland should have a symbol by which to communicate with the rest of the world. Wood products might become such as symbol. 

Then by taking up this symbol and focusing on becoming an international center for this commodity-product-service, an identity can emerge over the next 50 years or so. No hurry."

Although I received almost no response in the community, the seeds had been planted.

20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 5

1992 article in Maine Sunday Telegram.

In 1992, a recession year, I wrote this article as a pep talk to the city. I talked about what an amazing pedestrian experience we had here and how we could strengthen this by looking at our past, our present, and our future. 

Using the diagrammatic historical analysis described in my previous post, I laid out a roadmap for urban design work that built on the cities past. 

Diagram from article.

We needed to reconnect streets from Congress across Commercial Street out into the waterfront and be able to walk all around the piers. The whole peninsula I suggested could have a marginal way walk around it. Plazas along the waterfront would encourage public use and hence economic activity. People should be able to walk all around the nooks and crannies of the waterfront. Mixed use buildings with waterfront use out on piers at pier level and other non-residential uses above with most density at Commercial Street. Imagine an outdoor fish market.

Graphics from article using my thesis project as example.

Commercial Street itself at the time was a giant gap between the waterfront side and old port. I proposed narrowing this length for pedestrians by extending the sidewalks the depth of the angle parked cars narrowing the distance from 60 feet to 36 feet. Also, to plant trees and put lights and bench infrastructure in. And to use form based coding to create a variegated building profile along the water's edge (nooks and crannies).

Portland has the bones of a medieval european pedestrian city with our brick sidewalks and historic center. In 1992 while malls ruled the country, this article stood for the human scaled life. Next, further discussion of the article's ideas.

20 Years of Urban Design in Maine 4

I drew these diagrams in 1988 studying Portland Maine while working on my thesis, a mixed use project on Union Wharf. At the time I lived in Boston. For me, being from Maine lent a sense of urgency to working on our urban design issues. I chose Portland as the most interesting urban environment. As a former commercial fisherman, I wanted to explore the overlap between the working waterfront and regular urban living. The first step was to use historical maps to analyze the waterfront.

In the first sketch a street along the waterfront (now Fore Street) for water access is balanced by a street up to the peninsula spine and one to the eastern shore. Just enough path to manage a settlement.

The 1775 diagram shows wharfs for ships but three horizontal as it were (Fore, Middle and Congress), dominant streets tell an almost agrarian story in that movement along the peninsula was important.

1823 diagram clearly shows a radical change. You can see how the city streets used to go right out into the water. The pattern is for a very aggressive urban leap out into the harbor. Sea commerce was in full swing. The Portland urban experience became constantly moving along a street with buildings on both sides that may or may not be hovering over the water. You could look between buildings to verify this.

The 1831 diagram highlights the delicate "soft edge" created by all the wharfs and large and small buildings and pathways along the water front. This crenallated edge provided a rich variety of pedestrian experiences unique to Portland defining it experientially from another place as all site specific spaces do.

Then they built the railroad which after filling in behind became Commercial Street which cut the city off from the sea. The bottom four diagrams describe this new beginning; loss of the delicate soft edge; loss of the streets all running right out over the water; and finally a separation of the waterfront from the rest of the city.

Analysis like this helps us all create urban design plans which strengthen what we love about a place and move in a direction with confidence.

Here are two sketches of my thesis a mixed use development on Union Wharf using the above analysis. Offices and retail are toward the street and fish unloading and processing buildings are toward the pier end. The first sketch shows a movement from dense brick Commercial Street fabric (tiny piece of this shown far left and poking out at mid pier at bridge) to a pier column structure lighter wooden fabric with walkways along the edge.

Union Wharf thesis drawing. 

The next sketch shows the glass atrium arrived at from the brick courtyard just behind Commercial Street. The atrium has the brick fabric 4 stories on one side and the 3 story wooden fabric on the other. Eventually walking to the end of the atrium leads back into the brick fabric and either out to the fishing buildings from a fish market at grade or on second floor to the pedestrian bridge linking to the adjacent pier. This sketch is looking back toward Commercial Street direction.

Union Wharf thesis drawing.

Next we'll look at how the diagrams can inform an overall urban strategy for Portland.

Portland Waterfront Discussion at Maine Historical Society

Nice discussion Tuesday night on Portland's waterfront. Mayor Brennan gave a good outline of the potential for the area; Ann Pringle discussed the history of the zoning and how we should allow for things like fishing to come back as railroads are coming back as well as trying to avoid the pretend waterfronts like Baltimore; Bill Needleman gave a good discussion of the urban fabric noting the piers used to be extensions of Portland streets (as noted in my article 'Portland's Piers Are Streets' ); and Steve DiMillo gave a great history of growing up working for his father's restaurant, how his dad developed Long Wharf on an burned coal storage site, and how the area was once filled with little shops, etc.

The city is aware of the potential to use form based code to promote the sort of pedestrian fabric we crave but are not in a position to move forward with this according to Mr. Needleman.

The pedestrian wharf edge walk from Commercial Street to DiMillo's restaurant is one of the city's gems and whatever we can do to promote this sort of place is in public and private interests. One key is having restaurants or other public places to go to on wharf that naturally has pier owners creating public paths down pier for access.

As an architect who has worked since 1992 on Portland's waterfront urban design issues and lives here and who was once a commercial fisherman working on a dragger similar to one's shown above, I am grateful for what we have. People come here for the site of working boats and fish markets and seafood.

Together, private and public we can find a way as Ms. Pringle noted, we have already created an environment for a partnership that other cities envy.