The harbor management committee met on Monday night (Nov. 10th) to discuss the location and design of the new building to be placed at Winthrop’s landing/pier.  Besides the six members who sit on this committee, there were approximately 25 people in attendance including, but not limited to Winthrop residents, Harbormaster and a few assistant harbormasters, the town consultant, engineer and architect for this project. There were no reporters, per se, from the Winthrop Transcript and no one from WCAT.

So what happened?

The meeting lasted approximately two hours and the outcome was the town people decided it was best to keep the new building right where the trailer is currently.  As for design, many views were heard as with the new proposed parking.

Next step is for the harbor management committee to meet again (in private) to discuss the people's concerns and come up with a final decision. But, before that can happen, Tom Reilly has to appoint a few new members to sit on this committee. Hopefully this will happen on November 18th at the Town Council Meeting. Once these appointments are made, then the new harbor management committee can proceed and get this project going. 

So here’s a simple question – did anyone bother to ask the harbor master and his crew for their input since this project started? After doing some checking, the answer is NO!

John Crosby opened the meeting announcing the topic for the evening was strictly to discuss both the location and design of the building.

Mike Carney stated he’s not sure why the building was being relocated and pointed out that this project started several years ago by a different committee. Then Carney and David Vine, engineer, had a dialog about the design not being H20, but H15? This all has to do with fire trucks getting onto the pier in an emergency. The rating is 150psf – double the weight used in a parking garage.

The architect put several drawings on two different easels to show both location and design of building. To building location was marked with a yellow highlighter and a pink sticky paper was used to mark different locations as the public made suggestions. One by one residents got up and gave their opinions about the location of the building. Some cried their views of the city were being impacted, six people stated it should be kept right where it is (meaning the yellow highlight).  Charlie Scott thought the building should be over by the launching ramp for traffic control. John Crosby calmly pointed out that location was too far away for the harbormasters to watch what is happening in the harbor. From the launching ramp, they could not see if there's a problem at any one of the yacht clubs, over at Snake Island, airport or the mooring fields. Rob Savino, C.J. Victoria Fishing Charters, also a tenant of the pier, stood up and said he believes the building should be placed by functionality, not views.

Approximately one and a half hours into the meeting the building location was finally resolved and it was voted unanimously to keep the building right where it is now. The last half hour was spent with the architect putting up different boards reflecting the various phases of the design. Once again, the public went around and around with what they thought would be appropriate for the harbormaster and his crew.

Some questions asked were:

• where are the utilites already located? Answer: waterline is already in and can be tapped off, electric needs to be extended and sewer cuts out to the pier already.
  
• Can solar panels be used for green efforts? Answer: building needs to face full south to be most efficient. However, there will be many other energy efficient things built in such as two heating/air zones, and the building is maintenance free. 
  
• Is the building going to be ugly looking? Answer: building is very pleasing and has a stone base.
  
• What type of roof are you looking at? Answer: membrane roof (sheet roof - 30 years)

Other questions pertained to the size of the building.  Again, Charlie Scott had his points of view and even brought photographs of other harbormaster shacks that he felt was good enough.  These photographs are all well and good, but, based on research done over the last two years, several marinas and/harbormasters would love to have the size building that Winthrop is designing. One reason is to have a place for kids to hang out. For those of you who travel by boat with kids, I'm sure you would agree, especially on a rainy day when everyone is stuck in close corners.  

The original design was to have a storage/utility room, two offices, bathrooms, showers, mechanical systems in the ceiling, a porch to have picnic tables and chairs to enjoy the views under cover, and a waiting room for the long awaited ferry.  Since there's no telling what the future will bring and the money has already been allocated, why not build for the future and use that added space for other events in the meantime. For a list of potential uses go to: potential building uses.