The city of Gloucester has acquired a key 1.8-acre parcel along its waterfront that has been vacant for nearly a half-century.

“It is the most precious real estate in Gloucester,” Mayor Carolyn Kirk said. “It’s two blocks from Main Street. It’s really the only way we have to pull together the working waterfront and the harbor.”

The grassy parcel, which fronts a pier on which fishermen stack lobster pots, was declared “blighted, decadent and substandard” in 1962 and slated for urban renewal the following year, according to Kirk. The buildings were torn down a few years later, and the land has been vacant ever since.

This past spring, Kirk and the City Council completed a friendly eminent-domain taking of the parcel known as “I-4 C-2” – short for Industrial Lot 4, Commercial Lot 2, the name it was given as part of the urban-renewal designation. The city agreed to pay the longtime owner of the property a total of $1.5 million, $800,000 of which came from the state’s Seaport Bond grant program.

The newly acquired parcel is already being used as the site for the Cape Ann Farmers’ Market. On Labor Day weekend, the parcel will serve as a venue for a daylong “Celebrate Gloucester” music festival and fundraiser organized by Peter Van Ness, founder of the free music download site Gimmesound.com.

Plans for commercial and maritime development on the I-4 C-2 site have yet to be determined.

When Kirk was sworn in for her second term as mayor last January, she promised that the city would succeed in obtaining the vacant land. Prior to the city’s acquisition, a chain-link fence surrounded the property. Now, a sign at one end of the property states: “Ideas Under Development.”

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