Design team proposes relocated Harbor Master building to preserve access and meet FEMA rules

Design leads told residents that site constraints — a stormwater outfall under the existing building, property‑line setbacks and FEMA velocity (VE) and AE flood zones — make rebuilding on the existing footprint infeasible. Liam Davis, the project architect, said the team’s preferred approach keeps the new building within the AE line so the ground floor can remain at‑grade and accessible and uses dry flood‑proofing for nonessential ground‑floor functions.

Davis outlined tradeoffs: a VE zone would require elevating the first floor roughly 7 feet above grade, adding about 110 feet of ramps and stairs and increasing visual impact. “The public access to the harbor is, I think, far and away the number one thing that we’ve heard,” Davis said, and the proposed siting aims to preserve that access while meeting structural and code constraints.

Design consultant Jonas Gosman described three schematic approaches—two‑story, roof‑deck and a rotated volume option—that keep a compact 1,500‑square‑foot ground‑floor footprint for restrooms and ticketing and place programmatic and meeting space on upper levels. The team said additional community workshops will shape the final architectural expression.