
Fall River officials spent almost a decade fighting a plan by Hess to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in Mount Hope Bay. When the company abandoned the project in June, city officials started wondering what could rise from the site. In August, Mayor William Flanagan appointed a task force to study uses for the Weaver’s Cove property still currently owned by Hess. Fall River City Councilor Eric Poulin leads the committee.
PBN: Can you tell us about the task force?
POULIN: Rather than have Hess LNG come and announce there’s a sale of the property and it could be a developer the city doesn’t like – and then we’re spending additional years fighting off another ill-conceived project – this is a more proactive approach.
The community said clearly what it did not want. It did not want an LNG import terminal in that location in a densely populated neighborhood.
The idea now is, what is it that the community does want to see? Several ideas have been floated out there: a container port, a niche short-sea shipping operation, potential casino gaming if the Legislature goes forward with approving that as it’s expected to. There are other ideas for a potential storage facility for commuter rail trains. MassDOT has gone out and looked at part of the parcel for that purpose. It wouldn’t be the whole parcel but it would be a good portion. …There’s a community group called Green Futures that has plans for a hotel and a conference center, as well as some recreation aspects along the waterfront.
Then at some point, we would have a conversation with Hess if they’re willing to sell the land. They haven’t announced yet any alternative purpose for it. … I would think they would want to sell it and get some of their money back.
But we want to approach them with potentially a plan and a developer and hopefully a sale can come from that point. If that’s not a reality, then we might be moving to phase II, where we don’t have site control and we would try and figure out how to get site control.
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PBN: How important is this land to the city?
POULIN: It’s a 73-acre site along the waterfront, which is why Hess was attracted to it because they were going to have tanker ships pull right up to the property. That was their original plan anyway. Then as they got stymied, they had a loading-platform plan.
It’s a parcel that was identified by the city in a 2002 final draft of a report for the waterfront by the Cecil Group. That report recommended that the city try and get site control over that property because it had the potential for significant redevelopment.
It’s ideally situated with access by the water, access right off of highway ramps that come from Boston.
However, there are contamination issues at the site with an underground oil plume, some arsenic and beryllium. … The state and federal government may be weighing in at some point asking for the schedule of cleanups to be expedited.
PBN: When you’re looking at concepts for the land, how critical is it that they contain an economic-development component? PBN: What would it take to entice a developer to build such a project? PBN: A year ago, did you think you would chair a commission looking at this land? INTERVIEW
POULIN: The idea is to get input from the community, so folks may have different ideas. But from my perspective … and what I try to advocate for … is some type of usage that would create jobs. … If we can get some type of development that’s not a public-safety threat, that would bring in a number of jobs to the city, I think that’s the best scenario for the city.
Others may have some ideas for recreation components. And it is a large site. If that can be worked in that’s fine. … Unfortunately, we have the dubious distinction of having one of the highest unemployment rates in the state … and I’m always mindful of that as an elected official.
POULIN: One thing that you might be interested in – and this did not include the Weaver’s Cove parcel, but that’s not to say it couldn’t in the future – but as of [Sept. 7] the city just put through a reading of a Waterfront Transit-oriented Development Ordinance, which the mayor will be signing shortly. But what that does is changes the zoning along the waterfront and it streamlines the development process.
Basically anyone that wants to develop along the waterfront in Fall River now is not going to have to go through one, two, three years of a permitting process and spend thousands of dollars getting their permits and their variances and their zoning changes and anything else they might need. So we’re taking a more business-friendly approach now.
With the passage of this waterfront ordinance, what we’re saying is Fall River’s open for business. We’re business-friendly. You want to develop on the waterfront, come on in.
POULIN: I did not. … What we’ve done on the waterfront we’re going to try and do in other sections of the city. … It’s pretty much come full circle for me because I was advising one mayor on strategy for combating the Hess LNG going back to 2002. …Obviously we were successful. … and now we can move toward getting the things we actually want to see on our waterfront.
We’re kind of in the place Providence was 20 or 30 years ago. … We have a lot of potential here. … Now we’re hoping to start to realize some of that. •
Eric Poulin
POSITION: Chairman of Weaver’s Cove Reuse Task Force
BACKGROUND: Eric Poulin worked as an aide to then-Fall River Mayor Edward Lambert Jr. from 2001 to 2007 and focused on the city’s opposition to the Hess LNG project. From 2008 to 2010, he worked as a grant writer in the private sector. He is now a legislative aide for the Massachusetts Legislature. He is also a member of the Fall River City Council.
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s in political science from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 2000
FIRST JOB: Burger King worker at age 15
RESIDENCE: Fall River
AGE: 33