Some advice for The Olympia Companies: Don’t count your hotels until they hatch.

The Portland City Council voted Monday night to begin negotiations with the Portland-based real estate development firm to rebuild the Maine State Pier. But the vote was hardly an endorsement of the proposal Olympia submitted last February, which calls for the construction of a hotel, office building, and retail space on the publicly owned pier and adjacent waterfront property.

Ocean Properties, the New Hampshire-based development company headed by Maine-native Tom Walsh, submitted a plan that envisioned roughly the same mix of uses, with some additional marine tourism components. Prior to this November’s election, the Council was deadlocked over which plan to pursue.

Former Portland Planning Board member John Anton’s election to the Council broke the deadlock in Olympia’s favor. But Anton made his feelings about both plans clear Monday: “I don’t like either proposal, frankly,” he said.

What Anton and other pro-Olympia councilors like is the company’s “approach” to the development. This rather vague endorsement alludes to Olympia’s effort to seek public input during their design process last winter, though just how “public” that process was is a matter of debate. (The company handpicked a dozen waterfront and neighborhood activists and had them share their visions for the property during four top-secret design sessions.)

Praise for Olympia’s “approach” is also a reference to the company’s parking plan. That is, if one can call what they put forward a “plan” at all.

Unlike Ocean Properties, which planned to build parking structures on and around the pier, Olympia plans to provide most of the parking necessary for its proposal off-site. Where? Well, they never really said. Olympia officials gave vague assurances that they’d be able to secure parking spaces nearby, and pledged to spend millions to do so, but given the competitive nature of such deals, they never specified what potential properties or parking garages they had in mind.

At this point, anyway, such details are irrelevant. The council voted to begin negotiations with Olympia, but also made it clear that more (truly) public input is necessary before the first shovel digs in.

Anton, for one, has specifically said Olympia’s plan could be downsized significantly to better meet the needs of the rest of the waterfront and the city as a whole. For example, the waterfront office building Olympia envisions will be a tough sell, given that the company just completed an office building a block up the street, and another office building built by a different company is rising nearby. Councilors like Anton and Kevin Donoghue, whose district includes the pier property, are dubious of new development that merely moves people from one part of the city to another.

Then there’s the hotel. Olympia plans to plop that sucker right on the pier itself. The secret focus group it convened may have been comfortable with that placement, but the other 60,000-odd people in Portland are unlikely to be so accommodating. Citizens rose up in the early 1990s to smack down condominium development on the working waterfront. The difference between someone buying a waterfront condo and renting a waterfront hotel room is marginal, at best. Either way, you can’t fish from their private balcony.

This is all beside the fact there are significant city, state and federal regulatory hurdles to clear before a final project design dries on the blueprint. And the late addition to the project of a so-called “megaberth” at the Ocean Gateway marine passenger terminal next door further complicates future plans for the Maine State Pier.

City officials and Olympia’s team have just begun trying to figure out what the Maine State Pier would look like if a new, extra-long cruise ship berth were built at Ocean Gateway. But one thing seems certain so far: the pier would have less marine infrastructure on it under this scenario.

Observers tired of the past 10 months of back-and-forth over the pier’s future should either tune out or steel themselves now, because the real debate has only just begun.

Chris Busby is editor of the online news site, thebollard.com, which covers Portland. A print version of The Bollard is published quarterly.