Waterford — When Gov. Dannel P. Malloy visited Mago Point in the summer of 2014 to announce a $500,000 state grant to revitalize the waterfront neighborhood, Mago Point Business Association President Gary D. Smith called the grant a “major movement” for the neighborhood.

After two years, a string of public hearings and a new planning director in town, Mago Point finally seems ready to move, with a new fishing pier scheduled for construction this summer and updated zoning and regulations in the works.

“Not a lot happened over the summer, but right now we're getting into pushing it forward,” Abby Piersall, the town’s new planning and development director, said last week.

The project was on hold for several months after Piersall's predecessor, Dennis Goderre, who left in May to take a job working on the redesign of Interstate 84 through downtown Hartford.

On Wednesday, the town will host another hearing, this time to gather input from the public on proposed zoning changes, a plan to develop more parking spaces under the Route 156 Niantic River bridge and the construction of a fishing pier that will, officials hope, bring people to Mago point even if they don’t own a boat.

The neighborhood has been a sore spot in the town for decades, especially since the 1991 construction of the Route 156 bridge.

Residents and business owners have said that the new bridge, which brings drivers over Mago Point instead of through it, has turned the neighborhood into a “flyover” area.

“We’re a diamond in the rough,” said Elizabeth Berner, a member of the Mago Point Business Association who owns Captain John's Sport Fishing Center with her husband, Robert. "We kind of get lost in the shadows down here."

Businesses have also suffered.

The former Rope Ferry Road site of Unk’s on the Bay and Lisa's Landing, both closed seafood restaurants housed in one of Mago Point’s most prominent commercial buildings, has changed hands a couple times in the past few years, though Berner said she thinks the building has a new owner.

Many of the dozen businesses that have stayed on the Point only remain open in the summer, catering to recreational fishermen. 

In more than a year since the Small Town Economic Assistance Program (STEAP) grant was announced, town officials have been trying to decide which investments will encourage new businesses to come and build on the Point.

"We can lay a foundation, but it really will take the property owners that are down there and investors to really say, ‘OK, we have a great foundation, now how can we work with this to bring Mago to the next phase?'" Piersall said.

That foundation will include more flexible zoning rules and modernized regulations to make a more welcoming environment, temporary structures and events, like festivals or food markets, according to Glenn Chalder, president of the consulting firm the town hired with money in the STEAP grant.

"The question is, with all this traffic coming in, how do we create activities that will cause people to linger?" Chalder said.

The town is now zoned as a waterfront district, which allows for outdated activities like large-scale commercial fish processing but limits small-scale activities that can happen on the point, Piersall said.

"It doesn't allow for the kind of flexibility and focus on design that we're really hoping to achieve here," she said.

Once people have a reason to spend time in Mago Point year-round, Chalder said, developers might express an interest in investing in new construction there.

"Eventually people could get to the point where they'd be more comfortable, where they would say were not just going to do this during the summer months," he said.

Many people interested in Mago Point's future have called for changes that would make it similar to downtown Mystic or Rhode Island's Watch Hill, both historic waterfront neighborhoods that have long attracted customers to quaint restaurants and boutique stores, Piersall said.

That vision may not be realistic for Mago Point following recent federal floodplain regulations that require new buildings that are being constructed to be elevated above the ground, she said.

"Mago has to be something a little bit different and unique," she said. "It's not developing as sort of a traditional place that came in before flood plain regulations."

New proposed regulations will also expand the parking options on the Point, establishing spots under the Route 156 bridge and possibly expanding public access to the state-owned lot meant for users of the Mago Point boat launch.

Simultaneously, plans for the public fishing pier are making their way through the local and state approval process.

Piersall said bids for the project should go out in the spring and construction could begin as early as this summer, subject to a review by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

Several Mago Point businesses have also applied for a portion of the STEAP grant designated for improvements to their properties, Piersall said.

From there, the town plans to apply for additional grant money for sign improvements, development of the small park on Mago Point and any other small improvements that might draw businesses back to the point.

"We really want to ... do as much as we can on the public side to take the burden off of the folks who own property down there," Piersall said. ""It's kind of a blank canvas right now."

m.shanahan@theday.com

Twitter: @martha_shan