THE CONTROVERSY over the Bubba Gump Shrimp Restaurant, which has pitted leaders of the National Aquarium in Baltimore against developers of the Pier 4 Power Plant, might never have flared up had Baltimore's downtown development agency stuck with its initial plans for locating new barges or piers in the Inner Harbor.
When they sought proposals from developers interested in recycling the Pier 4 Power Plant three years ago, officials with the Baltimore Development Corp. indicated they also would entertain proposals for development in the narrow waterways on either side of the Power Plant -- the inlets between Piers 3 and 4 and Piers 4 and 5.
But the areas where city planners first indicated they would be willing to permit barges or piers are not precisely the same as the three areas where the Power Plant developers subsequently received city approval to build fixed platforms.
Within the past year, one platform location changed, and that turned out to be the location of the 8,000-square-foot building now targeted for occupancy by the Bubba Gump restaurant. The change was approved at a public meeting of Baltimore's Board of Estimates on Dec. 12.
That change, in retrospect, largely seems to be what prompted National Aquarium in Baltimore executive director David Pittenger to voice strong opposition to plans for the Bubba Gump restaurant this week.
Developers of the Power Plant and the waterways, meanwhile, say they would have been happy to stick with the original plan. They say they agreed to change the platform locations in response to a request from the aquarium.
The original platform location was "very leasable," developer David Cordish of the Cordish Co. said this week. "The irony is, we were just trying to do what the aquarium wanted and we stepped into a hornet's nest."
The saga began when the Baltimore Development Corp. selected Cordish Co. in 1995 to redevelop the city-owned Power Plant as a multi-level entertainment complex.
In its proposal, Cordish expressed a desire to construct barges or platforms in the inlets on either side of the three-building Power Plant complex and fill them with restaurants or other businesses that would help animate the waterfront -- in the same way a sidewalk cafe adds life to the street.
