The Annapolis Planning Commission approved the site plan for the Maritime Welcome Center, a building that will replace the current harbormaster’s office.

While much of the welcome center’s design remains the same, it has been reduced in size following extensive public feedback. The group of architects for the welcome center and Eileen Fogarty, manager for the City Dock project, led the Thursday meeting.

The first floor would include space for Visit Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, a nonprofit tourist organization, educational areas, water access, a waterman’s co-op for selling goods and a lounge for boaters.

The top floor of the welcome center would be home to the harbormaster’s office, which currently sits in the parking lot on Dock Street. A date for the demolition of the t harbormaster’s office has yet to be determined, according to Mitchelle Stephenson, spokesperson for the city.

“It’s a decidedly modern building that uses historic materials in a way that you feel is really compatible,” said Brice Turner, lead architect from BCT Design Group. “We’re not trying to recreate Disney World or a historic structure. We want it to be of its time.”

The welcome center will have a different funding source than the approved City Dock park and flood resiliency barrier system that is caught up in a legal battle with an anonymous Annapolis resident. Funding for the welcome center has “no relationship to” the pending award of a $32 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that will pay for the flood resiliency portion of the project, Fogarty said in October.

The welcome center is projected to cost $8.6 million, Stephenson said; that’s $1.4 million less than the $10 million estimate from seven months ago. The lower estimate is due to the building’s reduced size. The building is included in a $72.1 million cost estimate for the City Dock Park and flood resiliency barrier system.

“This project will make [downtown] more attractive. It will define Annapolis better. It will make us feel more welcome downtown, therefore, to walk around Main Street, and the impact will be immediate for businesses, restaurants and businesses like mine,” said Zia Boccaccio, owner of Alpaca International on Main Street.

John Richards opposed the center, saying that “it consumes precious public space … on the harbor without any meaningful consideration of environmentally preferred solution of using existing structures to accommodate any necessary or desirable functions.”

Robert Waldman, chair of the Planning Commission, said that the carbon cost of building a new structure “is probably more than retaining and reusing buildings, but sometimes, you just got to change it ” because the existing harbormaster building would be “a pile of mud” in 2050.

“Annapolis is known as a way stop for boats. Annapolis is known as the place where you get a boat fixed. Annapolis is known … as a place where you can sell a boat and buy a boat. Annapolis is known as a place where you can sail a boat. Annapolis is known as a place where you can store a boat, but if you’re passing through, you need that welcoming … and what exists now is inadequate, and what we’ll be replacing it [with] hopefully will remain adequate until 2050,” Waldman said Tuesday.

It is unclear when The Historic Preservation Commission will consider the site plan. Its next meeting is Dec. 10 and the project is not on the agenda.

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