ROCKLAND — University of Maine engineering students are getting hands-on experience this academic year, assessing the public landing in Rockland. They are attempting to answer those questions sure to be asked by future licensed engineers when a new public landing is constructed: What is the feasibility, can the existing granite pier hold more weight, what would be the best decking material, what kind of piling would they use, what are the requirements for ADA compliance, permitting constraints, flood constraints.

Though under the tutelage of one instructor, the students have focused individually.  One is studying the electrical components, another is studying the structural members. 

“They are trying to branch out, so that they all learn something,” Rockland Harbor Master Ed Glaser said of the project that had been suggested by the father of one of the students. 

By graduation, the students will have put together a full proposal packet which they will present at the University of Maine, as well as in Rockland for Glaser.

When the packet has been completed, with a lot of background information, Glaser will pass it along to an engineer or a design committee for further input.   

“We don’t have money to build a new public landing,” the Harbor Master said. “The trestle that is the heart of this public landing is somewhere from before 1880. As far as I know, it’s the last real bit of remaining equipment from the Lime Rock Railway. It needs to be preserved, and probably having it sit in saltwater is not the best way to preserve it.”

‘Public landing’ is a phrase meaning different things to different people, according to Glaser. 

From the time the Rockland area was settled, the entire area was considered the public landing, used by the city for projects, and for board and stone.

Some older residents still reference the parks, parking lots, and public docks as the public landing. Sometime in the 1960s and 1970s, Harbor Park was defined, leaving the wharf and floats unnamed. Left unnamed, these wharfs and floats have also been left untended.

“What’s happened in Rockland, which is a wonderful thing, is that the quality of services that everybody offers has improved,” Glaser said. “The maritime services, the marine services, the marinas that are available — they are better and better all the time. But the public wharf should not be the poorest facility in town. We have to keep pace with everybody else so that we don’t embarrass ourselves.”

In reference to the Harbor Trail extending five miles along the waterfront, Glaser describes how shopping malls have anchor stores at each end that provide reasons for shoppers to make the walk from one end of the stretch to the other. Glaser sees the public landing as such an anchor.

“I see the public landing as the keystone of Harbor Park. Harbor Park is nothing without public access,” he said. “Public access is both from the land and from the water. We want to welcome people from both ends.”