Mall built on pig farm could sell for $250 million

Published in the Current and the American Journal; co-written with Brendan Moran

Maine’s largest retail property, the Maine Mall, is up for sale, and some speculate the one-time pig farm could go for $250 million.

Until the late 1960s, the land was home to a number of pig farms. “There was at least 1,000 pigs in there – or more,” remembered Bob Fickett, a South Portland councilor who raised pigs himself on a Highland Avenue farm.

The area’s pig farmers were paid by towns to pick up trash, which they would then bring back to the farm, boil to sterilize and feed to the pigs. “Garbage that was worthless provided an income,” Fickett said.

In the late 1960s, Massachusetts developer William Lane purchased the land
piecemeal from the owners. He died in 1969, and his estate sold the parcels to Julian Cohen of Eliot, Maine. The land was wet and not great for building. “T ey drained a lot of it when they went in there” to build the mall, Fickett said.

Even now, “when they build out there they have to put in pilings that run dozens of feet into the ground,” said South Portland City Manager Jeff Jordan. The location was perfect, at the intersection of I-95 and I-295. The mall flourished, expanding several times and buying up land to create other shopping areas in the region.

Cashing out on top
S.R. Weiner & Associates, one of the companies that now owns the mall, plans to sell the 1.2 million square feet of retail space, which includes leases with Filene’s, Macy’s, J.C. Penney, Sears, Best Buy and Linens n’ Things.

Sources familiar with the mall’s operations and commercial real estate said the mall could sell for around $250 million.

Cigna Insurance and the New York State Teachers Retirement System own the mall with S.R. Weiner. Tom DeSimone, the executive vice president of S.R. Weiner, said the decision to sell the mall was unanimous.

“We did it because it made a lot of sense,” said DeSimone. Low interest rates have created a seller’s market. DeSimone also said that because the mortgage will mature next year, this would be an opportunity to sell it without debt.

“If you’re considering selling, there’s no question the time is now,” said Tom Moulton, a principal at NAI/The Dunham Group, a company that specializes in marketing commercial real estate. Moulton said the real estate market has been hot for the last couple years, but it’s unclear how long that will last.

“There is a very competitive market for this type of property, and it has a longstanding track record for outstanding economic performance,” said Jerre Bryant, the former general manager at the Maine Mall and currently the administrative assistant in Westbrook.

Bryant said the Maine Mall can charge higher rents than the demographics can support because it has virtually no competition. He said the mall also gets a boost from summer tourists. He said the mall did market research that proved as much in 1998.

“What we learned is the summer tourist in Maine is generally pretty affluent,” said Bryant. “They do spend money, and they spend it at the Maine Mall.”

Bryant said the sale made sense from S.R. Weiner’s perspective because the mall wouldn’t continue to expand at the rate it has. DeSimone said the mall has tripled in size since Stephen Weiner, the founder of S.R. Weiner & Associates, purchased it in 1981.

“The mall will continue to appreciate in value,” said Bryant. “It’s just that the rate of growth certainly was greater for the last 10 years than one would anticipate in the next 10 years. So I think the timing is good from an investment return standpoint.”

Bryant said S.R. Weiner is a much different company than it was 20 years ago. The Maine Mall was the first retail property Weiner bought, and, Bryant said, for many years it was the anchor in his real estate portfolio.

Weiner bought the mall in 1981 from Leatherbee and Company – Julian Cohen’s real estate company. Before buying the mall, Weiner
had been an executive at Leatherbee.

S.R. Weiner now owns and manages about 50 retail properties or about 14 million square feet of commercial space. Its sister company, W/S Development Associates, is currently developing 2.6 million square feet of commercial space, which includes the old Bradlees Plaza in Westbrook.

“We’ve all been in this deal for a long time,” said DeSimone. “Some of us for as much as 22 years.”

Big contributor to city
South Portland officials will be watching the sale closely to see what company purchases it and for how much. The mall contributes $3.1 million in real estate and personal property taxes to South Portland.

City Assessor Elizabeth Sawyer said the Maine Mall had been looking for a review of its assessment to get $20 million removed from its $142.8 million real estate tax assessment. But Sawyer said that request has been dropped.

Sawyer said the sale would not trigger a reassessment but said she would include the sale information in a review planned for next year, in which she will revisit last year’s revaluation of all properties. “I’m sure assessors throughout New England are going to be very interested” in the sale price, she said.

“We want the type of owner S.R. Weiner was,” said City Manager Jordan. He said the company has done a lot for the community, including supporting the People’s Regional Opportunity Program and holding charity nights around the Christmas holidays.

Jordan said the company approached him five years ago and offered to pay for a full-time police officer for the mall. He said it’s cut down on crime at the mall and saved the city money it would have had to spend on an officer to deal with shoplifting and other crimes at the mall. “Hopefully, that will continue” under the new ownership, said Jordan.

“I’d say there’s a wealth of buyers that could be interested in it,” said DeSimone, who said the buyer could be anything from a large mall management company to a pension fund.

Bryant said the Simon Property Group, the company that manages the mall, would most likely purchase the property. Based in Indianapolis, Ind., Simon Property Group manages 238 properties around the country. “They are the preeminent owner and manager of mall properties in the country,” said Bryant.

A spokesman for the company said they don’t comment before closing on a property. Simon began managing the Maine Mall in February of 2002.

“They never would have taken on the management contract if they didn’t have a desire to become owner,” said Bryant.

Bryant said consumers probably wouldn’t see much of a difference with the mall under new ownership. He said employees would probably see the biggest change.

“It’s not going to be dramatic change,” said Bryant. “I do think by virtue of being a publicly traded company that has to show a return, they do have to be a little more bottom-line oriented.”

A Roman candle: What it takes to set theater folk off

Published in the Portland Phoenix

What is the worst that could happen to a project you have worked hard on — so hard that you’ve fallen in love with it, can’t wait to show people, and are just dying to hear reactions to it? Such are the jitters backstage on the opening night of a play.

And what if you are the diva who has staked her reputation on this of all shows, the first by an unknown, a moving, brilliant work? What if it’s so avant-garde, in fact, that, by the end of the second act, even the playwright himself has begun to laugh and walk out? Such are the night terrors that stalk the stars.

How will you react? As Daedalus, staring stunned as Icarus falls to the sea, or as Sisyphus, who, no matter the certainty of futility, will continue to push that rock uphill? In Light up the Sky, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Moss Hart takes a swing at the cheapness and false sincerities that pervaded theater in the 1940s. We would now call that environment " Hollywood, " though Broadway is certainly not immune.

And yet the play retains a song of hope, of integrity, of comeuppance to theater types, of whom Hart was among the most celebrated. He may appear himself, somewhat, in the character of the sage playwright Owen Turner (Bob Dunbar), advising the young playwright on the realities of his newfound craft.

The main characters are all divas in their own ways. There is traditional swanning Irene Livingston (Dee Cooke); her mother, matronly superior Stella (Marie Cormier); overwrought and toujours-near-tears director Carleton Fitzgerald (George Dunn); wannabe top-diva Frances Black (Nikki Hunt); and even fiscal-rabbit-from-a-hat man Sidney Black (Scott Jones).

But none is more a spoiled diva than idealistic newcomer Peter Sloan. Sticking madly to his own ideas and keeping none but his own counsel, the playwright character, played with a light and loving touch by J.J. Barnett, remains aloof from all those who have put so much into making his writing real.

As opening night progresses and the play appears to bomb, the close-knit, passionate team self-destructs, leaving Sloan broken and bitter about the two-faced nature of his newfound " friends. " And yet comes the (ironic and to this one’s mind, frightening) awesome power of the least-seen of all theatrical forces: the reviewer.

The play within this play is an allegory, but so is the entire production, illuminating an essential part of the human condition by using metaphors and analogy. How quick people are to leave a ship perceived to be sinking, and how quick they are to leap aboard when its seaworthiness is proved!

Light up the Sky is about the theater world, complete with lessons on the etymology of " drama, " " theater, " and " audience. " There is sage advice from an experienced director, marketing tips from a man who knows his business, and the frustrated, beaten-down voice of the playwright.

Doree Austin is also an experienced director, who brings to the wings a strong background of wide range. The Gaslight’s marketing folks managed to draw a near-full house without so much as a sign outside. And Hart, of course, was ultimately far from frustrated but had his moments.

There are comic moments, well-delivered lines, and strong character exploration in this production. It would have been nice if Nikki Hunt, fresh from high school, had slowed her delivery a bit, but everyone else did a wonderful job in what approached an open-air performance on a hot night, and even Hunt remained a powerful presence on the stage.

The supporting cast, from unassuming Miss Lowell (Lynn Truman) to one drunk Shriner (Gary Wilson) and another more businesslike (Dan Collins), added an air of authenticity to this 1940s period play, topped off by the Irish accent on a Boston cop (Bob Witham).

Perhaps if we were still in the 1940s and ’50s, before entertainment reporters and gossip columnists showed the warts on the nation’s best-loved faces, the comic disbelief would be sharper. As it is, we know the infidelity — personal and professional — that breaks up shows, acts, and lives of the stars, and it is all too real.

Light up the Sky
Written by Moss Hart. Directed by Doree Austin. With Dee Cooke, George Dunn, Scott Jones, Marie Cormier and J.J. Barnett. At Gaslight Theater, in Hallowell, through June 28. Call (207) 626-3698.

BACKSTAGE

• Hey! They rocked the house over there! The Cast — Craig Bowden, David A. Currier, and J.P. Guimont — along with Elizabeth Chambers, Shannon Campbell, Joshua Stamell, and Jeremy J. LeClerc, put on a fabulous festival of short plays and monologues by three top contemporary playwrights. Carefully selected and cleverly juxtaposed theatrical tidbits showed a vast range of humanity: a second try at a first date, and the secret lives of ironworkers, DMV staffers, the Hardy Boys, and a Mamet minister. Their bare-bones approach exposes the true shine of their acting talents. Seek out their work on other stages.

• Jason Wilkins is working on a musical, Naked in Portland, that’s been in the works underground for over a year. A benefit CD is out, a fund-raising concert is coming up (July 24, 7:30 p.m., St. Lawrence, $10) and PSC intern R.J. McComish is on board as director. Word is some of the area’s top actors are being approached right now for parts. The run will be in September and October at the PSC Studio Theater. Watch this space for more.

Organic pest repellent with a hint of garlic

Published in the Current

They call their major piece of manufacturing equipment a “daiquiri machine.” In the development lab downstairs, three blenders sit empty on a countertop, with a bucket of crushed hot peppers and piles of garlic husks on the floor nearby.

This is not any sort of new-style restaurant. The “daiquiris” will be an insect repellent called “Anti-Pest-O,” manufactured from the peppers and garlic and dispensed into 55-gallon drums and shipped off-site for packaging and distribution.

Holy Terra Products has come a long way from the basement of Dr. Jim White’s Cape Elizabeth home, where the corporate headquarters, development lab, product mixing and garden-testing all were 18 months ago.

Their product, still waiting for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approval, is an all-natural, non-toxic insect repellent that is effective on a wide range of pests, if White’s own garden is any indication. It contains none of the chemicals in most pest repellents and insecticides, and quickly gathered a large following when on the market briefly in 2002.

At the Whole Grocer in Portland, “they were standing in line,” White said.

The company then believed Anti- Pesto-O would be exempt from the EPA regulations, but had to pull the product because of state requirements.

Many stores, hoping it would be back, held shelf space for the product for several weeks, but are no longer.

“We get requests every week,” said Mike St. Clair, a former retail marketing executive at Hannaford Brothers, who joined the company recently to serve as vice president for sales and marketing. “We’re anxious to get to market.”

The company has hired a regulatory consultant in Washington, D.C., to make sure the EPA permitting process goes smoothly. That involves product-safety tests on animals, and on people.

The “ultimate irony” in a year of EPA-required safety research, St. Clair said, is that “in the process of testing, the EPA has allowed us to put (Anti Pest-O) on food products that are consumed directly by humans.”

Now the company is just a few weeks from filing. The regulatory process has been “frustrating and aggravating,” taking a lot of time and including expensive tests.

“It is almost financially prohibitive,” White said. St. Clair said there should be new rules for organic products to make it easier to prove they are non-toxic.

Even getting enough supplies is a challenge. The company had to go all the way to India to find an EPA-approved supplier of a major ingredient, neem oil.

In mid-2002, Holy Terra moved to the Center for Environmental Enterprise, a state-funded business incubator on the SMTC campus. CEE provided a lot of help, including access to public agencies and other businesses that could help. They also connected to marketing classes at USM, which did some research for the company.

USM’s patent office helped the company write and file a patent on Anti-Pest-O, which is still pending.

They were hoping to use some of the CEE building’s basement for production, but ran into problems because SMTC didn’t want to give up the space, St. Clair said.

In October 2002, the company met with a group of investors who agreed to kick in $500,000, some of which is keyed to sales figures when Anti-Pest-O goes on the market.

That cash allowed an April move to the Fox Street Business Center in the old Freightliner trucking building in Portland. The company has enough space for production there and can expand if necessary.

Now they are gearing up to produce an infomercial to hit national airwaves early in 2004. The retail market will be first, including major hardware chains as well as natural-product sections of grocery stores.

St. Clair expects Anti-Pest-O to do very well with a wide range of customers. “They’re interested in finding an alternative to toxic chemicals and toxic solutions,” he said.

The company has also met with the state Commissioner of Agriculture and the Cooperative Extension program at UMaine. “Everybody is extremely interested in this,” White said.

Agricultural buyers won’t come on board until after even more studies are completed. USM and UMaine are just beginning work and may not be ready for two years.

Research will determine how it can best be used in what is called “integrated pest management,” using a variety of methods, including crop rotation and beneficial insects, to reduce the number of chemicals applied to crops.

White has plans to expand the product line, including possibly ncorporating Anti-Pest-O into other products.

The company has maintained its sense of practicality, including a not-too-official memorandum. On a white board next to St. Clair’s desk, his 10-year-old daughter has written this simple to-do list: “1. Make AntiPestO, 2. Test AntiPestO. 3. Get AntiPestO aprooved (sic). 4. Sell AntiPestO.”

The potter at Higgins Beach

Published in the Current

Bill Cox has spent a lifetime of summers on Higgins Beach. He says it’s a break from his pottery at home in Pennsylvania, but he still manages to draw inspiration from the Maine coast, and sell a few pieces as well.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the colors of blues and greens in the ocean,” Cox said. He also looks for colors in the local rocks. “Sometimes I’ll photograph things,” and take the pictures back to the studio to work on recreating the colors, he said.

Cox, 75, is a retired research chemist who now pursues his “serious hobby” of the past 20 years with a scientific passion.

“My real interest is in glaze development,” Cox said. “The chemistry of these temperatures is very complicated.”

He keeps a notebook with formulas for glazes and the results of testing different bases and ways to apply glazes.

“You can put the same glaze on two clay bodies and they’ll look very different,” Cox said.

He sometimes mixes the clay himself, but not usually. More often, if he doesn’t use just a standard commercially available clay, he’ll use Maine materials to put what’s called a “slip” on it – a thin clay mixed with other material on top of a generic clay base.

“Sand imparts texture and color,” Cox said.

He always mixes the glazes according to his own recipes. Finely ground glass is the basis for all glazes, as are differing amounts of clay, feldspar and talc. Other substances add color. Amounts of iron vary the depth of brown or yellow, while cobalt imparts a blue color.

Each substance has a different melting temperature, which affects how the glaze appears after it has been fired in a kiln.

Sometimes he has a color target but usually he is playing with a recipe he has used before.

Cox tries to keep only about a dozen mixed glazes at a time, to prevent his
studio from being too cluttered.

“I’m still fascinated with bowl shapes,” Cox said. “It enables me to show the
glaze both inside and outside.”

They also reveal the glazing process. On Cox’s bowls, places where a slightly too-thin glaze has dripped a bit are evident, as are overlapping areas where the items are hand-dipped.

Cox also keeps records of how he coats his pottery with glazes. Dipping a bowl in glaze quickly results in a lighter color than pulling it out slowly.

Even so, there are some appearances he just can’t recreate, despite all of his notes. He chalks those up to variations in materials from his suppliers and moves on. He is a studio potter, not overly concerned about whether a large number of his items match in the ways that commercially made pottery must.

“The glaze development just goes on and on and on,” Cox said.

He makes some pieces for family members and also sells his work at a gallery in Naples. Much of his work is sold right from his studio in Pennsylvania, but he brings some up each year to sell at the Higgins Beach Craft Fair in August. This year the show will be held Aug. 15 and 16 in a community building near the Higgins Beach Inn.

He also has donated work to support fund-raising efforts of the Friends of Scarborough Marsh, Maine Audubon and the Scarborough Historical Society.

His family is long established in Higgins Beach. In addition to family in the area, his father first came there in 1918. “Ironically he stayed in this cottage when he was a bachelor,” Cox said of the cottage where he now spends summers.

He does not accept commissions. “This is what I do. If you like it, that’s fine,” Cox said.

Fine going up for spill

Published in the Current

The state Department of Environmental Protection has rejected a proposed settlement from the insurance company representing the trucking firm responsible for an April 7 jet fuel spill in South Portland and will now assess damages.

“At this point, we wouldn’t be negotiating. We’d hand them the bill,” said John Wathen, regional director for the DEP. The DEP will determine the amount based on what is expected to be a year-long study on the impact the spill had on the surrounding environment.

Both parties had hoped to reach a settlement, but the insurance company made “an insufficient offer,” according to Wathen, who said before negotiations collapsed that he was looking for “something in the six-figure range.”

Sean Dundon, the environmental-impact insurance adjuster representing the trucking company, expected it to be “less than $100,000.”

The DEP already has taken several aerial photos of the damage to the marsh grasses near the site of the incident in which a fuel tanker truck overturned on Broadway, spilling 6,000 gallons of jet fuel into the street and culverts leading to the Fore River.

The accident occurred right in front of the fire and police station.

In the next two weeks, scientists will be collecting samples from the shellfish and sediment in the area and analyzing them to determine how much fuel remains in the environment and what the spill’s lasting effects will be.

“This is a process. There are a lot of things we’re going to do,” Wathen said. “All of the costs will start going on the tab.”

He said the bill, which would include staff time and lab fees as well as compensation for the environmental damage, could be as much as $500,000.

Dundon said his understanding from the DEP was that the April 7 spill was “much smaller” than the Julie N spill in 1996, which released 180,000 gallons of crude oil into Portland Harbor when a tanker hit the Casco Bay Bridge.

The cleanup cost $50 million, and the DEP fine, $1 million, was finally agreed upon in 2000.

The driver of the truck in the April 7 accident, Michael McCarthy, 43, of Berwick, was given a summons for imprudent speed, a charge carrying a $98 fine.

“There is some (lasting) damage,” Wathen said. It is limited to the cove to which the spill was contained and can be seen in growth differences between marsh grasses in the area and uncontaminated places nearby.

“We’re concerned about shellfish in the mud” as well, Wathen said.

He said the study is worthwhile not only for this case, but also because jet fuel spills are relatively rare. Gathering more information about the impact of jet fuel on the environment could help people dealing with future spills, here or elsewhere.

Jet fuel is far more volatile than crude oil, which can stick on wildlife or other surfaces for months. Much of the fuel evaporated during the days after the spill, and about 40 percent of it was collected during the post-accident cleanup.