Sidebar: This one won't fail

Published in the Portland Phoenix

When he’s describing Ocean Properties’ plans for a public market at the end of a 1000-foot pier off Commercial Street, Bob Baldacci, the governor’s oldest sibling, sounds a heck of a lot like someone promoting the old Portland Public Market, which closed in 2006 after years of charging tenants elevated rent for low-traffic space.

He talks about an emphasis on local sources of food, how attractive it will be to residents and visitors, how much support for local merchants there is in Portland, how handy the nearby parking will make it as a stop for people shopping downtown. All of which were true at the previous market, but the attractiveness never outweighed the hassle — it was a block off Congress Street, the free parking was always empty, and nobody ever stopped down there just for fun.

But Baldacci's picture changes right at the end: fishermen will be able to unload the day’s catch right at the market, supplying both the restaurant and the merchants. Those merchants will be wholesalers as well as retailers, meaning their sales volume could be far higher than the Public Market’s pedestrian-dependent vendors. (The slow demise of the Portland Fish Exchange could even cause some businesses to move to the new space.)

It might be just the ticket. Or it might be just like its predecessor, doomed to fail from the beginning.

Park it: Both proposals for the Maine State Pier are missing something big

Published in the Portland Phoenix

If you believe the Portlanders who worked on the Olympia Companies proposal for redeveloping the Maine State Pier, the competition between their outfit and Ocean Properties, led by former US senator George Mitchell and Bob Baldacci, is simple: big money versus local ideas. Which isn’t entirely true.

Both firms have local ties, and connections elsewhere, and are backed by incredibly wealthy men. The Two Big Names (respectively, the cousin and brother of the governor) have teamed up through Ocean Properties, a New Hampshire-based firm (owned by a billionaire Mainer whose company is paying a lower business-tax rate than if it were based in Maine), backed by firms from Portsmouth, Portland, and Yarmouth. The Portland-based Olympia Companies (led by a multi-millionaire Mainer) have assembled a collective of nine firms from Portland and two from Massachusetts to do the planning work.

If you believe the local daily paper, the two proposals are largely the same and equally good. That’s not entirely true, either.

The ideas submitted in response to the city’s request for plans to repair and refit the Maine State Pier into something that enhances the city’s waterfront both economically and aesthetically have similar budgets ($90 million for Ocean and $91 million for Olympia) and similar ideas for how much area should be dedicated to retail, hotel, open space, cruise-ship terminal operations, ferry loading, and other uses.

But even on paper, the plans are radically different. And each of them has a major flaw that may prevent either from ever actually turning the decrepit and collapsing Maine State Pier into something other than an ugly remnant of Portland’s working waterfront.

Olympia’s plan shows full-color vistas, including a projected view from the intersection of Commercial Street and the Franklin Arterial that has a wide grassy swath leading down to the water between curved building facades and a clean, convenient ramp for cars to get on the Casco Bay Lines ferries. (Imagine! the picture seems to say aloud, if you could see the water from Commercial Street without looking through dingy alleys or vast parking lots!) This is a view to kill for.

Ocean Properties opens its plan with a three-color sketch of a big-box-store-like “public market” (see the sidebar for why the gov’s bro says this one won’t fail) with an 80-car parking lot right in front of it. Real nice. Just what we need — another parking lot smack on the waterfront. To make matters worse, Olympia’s view from Commercial and Franklin all the way down to the water is, in Ocean’s plan, a 350-space parking garage (that brick facing will look great).

For one project, the parking makes everything ugly; for the other, there’s no such worry. It makes choosing easy for the public, and for councilors, right? Not so fast.

Parking is precisely the difference between the two projects: Ocean Properties’ plan includes that giant garage and the street-level parking lot, for a total of 430 parking spaces, of the 608 the project would use at peak capacity under city guidelines. (The city allows developers to build fewer spaces than their projects would appear to require.) This will no doubt be the subject of major community objection, because parking is ugly.

Olympia’s proposal doesn’t raise that kind of concern. It’s a beautiful plan, but partly because it has no parking at all. Well, that’s not entirely fair. Olympia’s plan does include an unspecified but very small number of “short-term on street parking” spaces for people to drop off or pick up ferry passengers, or pop into some of the businesses in the new development. But the company admits its project would use 440 parking spaces at peak demand under current city guidelines, which would require the company to build as many as 220 new ones as part of the project.

The company has, however, set aside $13 million to spend finding parking, possibly, its proposal says, “with long term leases in either the Casco Bay Lines Garage or the Ocean Gateway Garage.”

That’s a nice idea. Except that the Casco Bay Parking Garage (which is not owned by Casco Bay Lines) has a seven-year-long waiting list to get even one reserved parking space. And the 700-plus-space Ocean Gateway Garage is not yet built, but is sized to accommodate the tenants and visitors in the Ocean Gateway project, so relying on that garage to lease out a large portion of its spaces may be a bit wishful.

The only remaining option will be — you guessed it — building a parking garage. Thirteen million is plenty for a big one: at the going rate of between $15,000 and $20,000 per space to build a parking garage, it could be between 650 and 870 spaces — significantly larger than the city-owned Spring Street garage next to the Cumberland County Civic Center, which has just over 500 spaces.

So Portlanders — and specifically the city councilors — are left to decide between an ugly-but-practical project backed by big names that will not significantly improve Portland’s waterfront aesthetics, or a beautiful project that will require a big shiny new parking garage somewhere nearby. Where, exactly, would it go? That’s a choice we can all look forward to.

Failed suburban paper tries again in the city

Published in the Portland Phoenix

A branch of the Portland Press Herald that couldn’t keep a weekly newspaper afloat in the suburbs has shifted to a new publication geared to compete directly with the Portland Phoenix.

As described, the new paper will be what the industry refers to as a “faux alt” — a “youth-oriented” weekly that attempts to imitate genuine alternative papers such as the Phoenix. A press release announcing the change says the new publication will include coverage of the local arts scene, as well as “household tips and repair ideas . . ., budget tips, . . . (and) recipes” targeted at 27- to 37-year-old people living between Brunswick and Old Orchard Beach, and inland from Portland to Windham.

Similar efforts by other daily-newspaper companies around the country have resulted in terrible failures, including the closure of the Miami Herald’s Street Weekly in January 2005, after six years of financial losses. And this January, the Tampa Tribune’s attempt, Orange, folded after just 20 weeks of publication. Industry statistics show that daily newspaper readership is nose-diving — especially among younger audiences. These faux alts are an admitted marketing ploy to deliver younger readers to advertisers.

The Press Herald has tried before: in the early ’90s (going up against the alternative Casco Bay Weekly in its heyday) the daily planned Go magazine as a stand-alone publication, but after suffering low newsrack pickup, it was demoted to an entertainment insert in the Thursday Press Herald. And in the summer of 2006, there was the Old Port Times, an advertorial product covering Portland night life that appeared briefly and has never again been heard from.

The staff of the new paper will be substantially the same staff as worked at the Community Leader, a three-year-old effort by a division of the Press Herald to attack the Forecaster (owned by the Lewiston Sun Journal, making the Leader part of a daily newspaper battle-by-proxy) in its home turf of Falmouth and Freeport.

In a letter to readers in last week’s final edition of the Community Leader, its publisher — who is keeping his job — outright admitted that former readers and advertisers “are in good hands with the Press Herald and our competitive publishers” — meaning the Forecaster and the Sun Journal won, hands down.

The new weekly publication’s name reflects the Press Herald’s apparent plan: Switch. And while the paper, like its daily parent, will likely depend at least in part on sources answering questions over the phone, Switch’s top brass appear to be following the Press Herald execs’ lead on handling calls they get from reporters — which is not to return them at all.

Portland Phoenix, the best in New England!

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The Portland Phoenix had its best year ever at the New England Press Association (NEPA) awards banquet on Saturday, taking home 15 awards, including 10 for first place.

We also scored the New England-wide contest’s highest honor — George A. Speers Newspaper of the Year, awarded for overall excellence in editorial content and presentation.

Our advertising and production departments won first place in Advertising General Excellence, the highest honor given for those departments.

Both Portland Phoenix staff and freelancers won first place in Local Election Coverage, for reporting on the 2005 election.

Freelancer LANCE TAPLEY won first place in Government Reporting, for “Burning Money” (February 17, 2006), about how the state failed to negotiate bulk-discount prices for its Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides heating oil to poor and elderly Mainers. Tapley also won second place in Investigative Reporting, for his ongoing series on torture in the Maine State Prison’s Supermax unit.

Former staff writer SARA DONNELLY won first place in History Reporting for “Record Keepers” (September 1, 2005), her coverage of Portland historians’ efforts to preserve local artifacts and information. Donnelly also won second place in General News for “Grass Roots Fire Fight” (June 9, 2006), a look at the Maine Green Party’s internal conflicts and struggle to survive.

Freelance writer WHIT RICHARDSON won first place in Sports Reporting for “Sky Society” (July 14, 2006), which profiled the culture of Portland’s Ultimate Frisbee-playing community.

Managing editor JEFF INGLIS won first place in the General News category for “Armory Arts Center” (January 6, 2006), a story envisioning what could become the future of the abandoned South Portland armory. (The building has since been purchased by the city of South Portland and turned into a garage for city trucks and general storage space, as the city council attempts to determine a long-term plan for the building.)

Our advertising and production staff won several awards, as well.

They had a clean sweep of the Local Ad — Color category, taking first, second, and third places. And they won first place in Advertising Campaign, first place in Local Ad — Black-and-White, and second place in Self-Promotion.

Celebrating a year-long effort — alone

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Moes Haven, an alt-rock duo who are just as happy to write and record admittedly “terrible” songs as they are to create good ones, have completed their year-long project of recording a 30-minute album for every day of 2006 (see “An Album A Day,” by Dana Jones, January 13, 2006).

To mark the accomplishment, Matt Farley, one of the band’s two members, will taking a week off work, between February 2 and 10, and listening to his own music (182.5 hours of it) for eight days straight. Farley’s goal is to sit through every song of 2006, in order, without leaving his apartment in Manchester, New Hampshire.

For obvious reasons, he expects to be alone for almost the entire time — except for weekends, when his Moes Haven partner, Tom Scalzo, will make the trip up from Boston to play video games and listen.

Farley has invited members of the media to the party — including representatives of the Portland Phoenix, Late Show with David Letterman, The New York Times, and publications based as far away as Texas, as well as friends and family. “I don’t expect anyone to come,” he says. Perhaps that shouldn’t be a shock: Farley plans to sleep through much of the music himself.

“I have a five-disc changer,” Farley says, noting that he can fit two 30-minute albums onto a single CD. “I can sleep through up to five hours at a time,” before having to wake up and reload the CD changer.

But the effort to create has always been more of what drives Moes Haven than any prospect of what others might define as success. They make “a little money” every month from people who buy selections from their 313-song selection on iTunes. (Farley notes the irony of “strangers paying us to listen to our songs, while our friends and family tell us to turn them off.”)

No one need worry about a live show. “We don’t even know how to play most of our songs,” having written and recorded most of them fairly quickly, and moved on almost immediately to the next.

Next up — apart from a 16-track professionally mastered collection of their best songs from 2006, Victory Is Ours (For Now), due out perhaps in time for the listening party, or shortly thereafter — is a five-year self-imposed silence.

To keep fans on the hook, though, after three years, the group will make some live recordings of new songs and secretly stash them between the pages of books in libraries around New England, as detailed in the last cut on the album that showcases the best songs they wrote in December. It’s called “Moes Haven’s Five Year Plan,” and describes what the band hope will become a popular treasure hunt for their newest material. If history is any predictor, the band’s members will be the only ones to hear nearly all of those songs, too.

On the Web
Moes Havens: moeshaven.com

Phoenix freelancer honored by Maine lawyers

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Lance Tapley, a longtime freelancer for the Portland Phoenix, has been honored with the Excellence in Legal Journalism Award from the Maine State Bar Association, recognizing his work investigating inmate abuse at the Maine State Prison. Tapley will be honored at a dinner next week.

Tapley’s prison features — the first installment of which won first place in the long-form-news-story category in the nationwide competition held by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies in 2006 — has continued for more than a year. The Portland Phoenix series has exposed physical and psychological torture of prisoners by guards, the failure of prison officials to care for mentally ill inmates, the unfulfilled promises of top-level state administrators to make reforms, and efforts by staff in the office of the state’s attorney general to obstruct court orders seeking to improve inmate treatment.

Mainers lead coverage in Mexico and Minnesota

Published in the Portland Phoenix

It might be a bit early to plan your spring break, but whether you head for the snowdrifts of the Great Lakes states or the sun of coastal Mexico, Mainers are already there, set to help you figure out how best to spend your time.

Chris Harte, a former publisher of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram (when they were owned by Guy Gannett), will soon take up the reins as chairman of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Minnesota’s largest daily newspaper, after the surprise December 26 announcement that paper would be sold to an investment firm Harte helps lead.

The paper’s previous owners, the California-based McClatchy Company, made news last year by purchasing 12 newspapers from the Knight Ridder newspaper company, for which Harte also worked in the late 1980s.

Harte, an heir to the Texas-based Harte-Hanks newspaper fortune, who lives in Cumberland Foreside and has an office in downtown Portland, is a major investor in the rapidly growing Current Publishing weekly-newspaper empire in Southern Maine. The group he is working with on the Star-Tribune deal also bid on the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer, which became available as part of the McClatchy-Knight Ridder deal, but ended up not being the winning bidder.

In warmer climes, Aran Shetterly (a Maine native and brother of Phoenix columnist Caitlin Shetterly) and his wife Margot Lee Shetterly have launched what may be the key to the mother of all spring-break trips: Inside Mexico, a monthly magazine for English-reading residents of, and visitors to, our southern neighbor.

To date, the magazine has put out two issues, which have included news and features about English-speakers in Mexico, with an emphasis on improving the quality of readers’ lives in that country. Articles have included tips on how to make sure your American-bought car is legal to drive in Mexico, tips for understanding Mexican politics, traditional recipes, and explanations of cultural icons.

The Shetterlys say there are more English speakers in Mexico than the entire population of Maine, and are distributing the paper in urban and tourist centers throughout the country and in PDF form online (at insidemex.com) to reach as many of them as possible.

Check them out before booking your clothing-optional solar pilgrimage, and make sure their bar and restaurant listings expand from Mexico City to the coast. You wouldn’t want to miss the hottest spots west of Havana.

Media discussion on Maine Impact podcast

Distributed on the Maine Impact podcast

Ideas from away: Forget Yankee independence — try imported ingenuity

Published in the Portland Phoenix

There is plenty of energy in Portland to make this a better place to live, work, and create. Groups from neighborhood associations to local businesses to city leaders are dreaming up schemes that, while untested, seem — at least to their supporters — like they might be good ideas.

But we don’t need to make these efforts entirely on our own, despite New England’s leave-me-alone-I’ll-do-it-myself tradition. Other communities face problems similar to ours, and have come up with ways to solve them that could work as well here.

Homeless cleaners
There are plenty of folks who could use some on-and-off work around Portland. Some of them are panhandlers (some are even the regulars, like the guy whose car seems to be forever out of gas on the other side of the Casco Bay Bridge, or any of the folks who ask you for some cash despite the fact that they asked you — and you gave — just an hour ago). Others have various physical or mental problems that make getting or keeping a job difficult or impossible.

And there’s plenty of litter lying around, from cigarette butts to food wrappers, broken glass, or winter clothing cast off in our “mid-winter” heat wave.

Palo Alto, California, has put these problems together in ways that combat both. The city’s downtown-business promotion association (their equivalent of Portland’s Downtown District) has hired a person (a formerly homeless man) to find and train homeless people to sweep the sidewalks, pick up trash, and weed and plant in public gardens, in exchange for housing, food, and job-skills training. The group, called the DOWNTOWN STREETS TEAM, has been going since May 2005, and has already contracted with the city’s public works department to maintain athletic fields on weekends.

After several months in the program, participants — who are selected based on their expressed desire to find permanent housing and work — are “certified” by the program as job-ready. Eighteen former team members have landed jobs, and several downtown Palo Alto businesses (as well as the usual government and nonprofit agencies) are actively involved in funding the effort.

Prima Vera
The all-ages “scene” in Portland is a sad joke. For years, youth-targeted concerts have been relegated to Sunday afternoon shows at the Big Easy and the odd punk/metal gig at the Station or Asylum. Outside of that, young bands and fans need to get their rock off in ugly halls intended for banquets and church meetings or give in to the only other reliable late-night option: Denny’s. This eternal shortcoming of Portland’s arts community not only breeds boredom and discontent, but the aimless loitering that gives kids a bad rap with their elders. It’s a depressing cycle of mutual resentment, and the blame lies squarely on a town that offers these kids no worthwhile venue to release their creative energy.

This isn’t merely a local concern, but one that’s repeated in small towns and booming metropolises across the country. At least one major city came up with something to do about it: the Vera Project was founded in Seattle in 2000, inspired by a legendary ALL-AGES VENUE of the same name in Holland. Vera’s dual purpose is to provide consistent and positive nightlife for city youth, and, more importantly, foster a creative, cooperative environment for young people. Aside from hosting all-ages concerts every weekend, the Vera Project is also home to punk-rock yoga and break-dancing classes, a screen-printing studio, an art gallery, and open classroom space. The Project is close to raising the $1.8 million needed to build a new home for these events and more, including a recording studio for young bands to record demos and albums.

More than merely a noble idea, the Vera Project has been well received and well supported by Seattle’s youth. More than 17,000 kids attend Vera Project events each year, and more than a thousand have used its other programs and facilities. Portland has an empty Public Market complex and more empty storefronts popping up by the month. It’s time to pony up, put one of those new condos on hold, and give the kids something to do. The next generation of Portland’s arts community will thank you.

Street art, for real
The People’s Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts, inspired by an effort from the Other Portland, has put art out on the street in an apparently successful effort to slow traffic at a dangerous intersection. Though you’d think those yellow and red lights would be enough, they’re clearly not, for us or for Mass-holes. A MURAL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD at High and Congress streets could slow cars down, helping out the cyclists and pedestrians trying to make their pilgrimages around the Arts District.

It would also help support a local artist, though we’ll want to choose the artist carefully so as to find someone nimble enough to leap away from the cars while the painting is being created. (It probably has to be a painting — the giant sculpture of Longfellow that is effectively in the middle of the State and Congress intersection hasn’t slowed cars there at all.)

Party, party — and party
Maine’s third-party endeavors are among the strongest in the nation, but they’re still handicapped by a major problem seen most recently in this year’s gubernatorial election: casting a vote for a third-party candidate risks “throwing away” a vote for a centrist candidate who actually has a shot at winning. Greens hate it because it cuts their returns; Dems hate it because if the Greens pull enough lefties away, the GOP might come out on top; Republicans love it because it gives them their best shot at holding statewide office.

Let’s take a page from Ireland, a very strong democracy with a vibrant multi-party system, and institute the SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE. People vote for their first choices, even if those candidates have no real shot at winning, but without throwing away their general preference for more centrist candidates. You rank the candidates in order, and the vote is tabulated according to a few simple rules: nobody can win without an actual majority of the votes; candidates who come in last have their supporters’ votes transferred to the next-highest candidates on the supporters’ ballots; if nobody wins a majority outright, the process of eliminating the last-place person continues until someone actually gets a majority and is declared the winner.

In this year’s gubernatorial election, incumbent Democrat John Baldacci “won” with 38 percent of the vote. Collectively, the three third-party candidates came in second, beating Republican Chandler Woodcock by 8000 votes.

Sadly, we’ll never know how many people voted for Baldacci not because they liked him, but to forestall a Woodcock win. What if those folks could have said, “My preference is for [Barbara Merrill or Pat LaMarche or Phillip Morris NaPier] to win, but if the vote totals show that person is coming in last, my second choice is Baldacci” — or one of the other independents, putting Baldacci in as third choice.

Perhaps enough folks would have supported Merrill or LaMarche to elect the first female governor in Maine’s history, rather than what we have now: a lame-duck governor with no mandate or political capital to get anything done, even within his own party.

Get on the bus
Lots of cities around the country, and even ski areas in rural Maine, pay for (or find sponsors for) buses to take people to and from nightlife destinations. On Mount Desert Island, LL Bean funds a shuttle service that cuts pollution and traffic. Here in Portland, NIGHTLIFE SHUTTLE BUSES could take party-goers around the Old Port and even into the West End, Deering, and the Hill as the night wore on, helping the poor, beleaguered police clear the crowds from Wharf Street in summertime, and in winter saving the rest of us from searching snowbanks for upended drinking buddies who have lost their way.

It would cut drunk driving, give the city’s bus service a much-needed revenue boost (not to mention actual riders), and help everyone have a better time. Maybe, if the bar owners had any free cash after paying their bar-stool taxes, licensing fees, and other city-required costs, they might voluntarily pony up to help their customers get around the city better.

Dial-a-meter
It sucks, hoping for a green ticket. You slid in on the end of someone else’s time, and don’t have any change. But — of course! — you have your cell phone.

In Denver, you can PAY YOUR PARKING METER ON YOUR CELL PHONE, by calling a toll-free number. Then you punch in your parking space’s number and how much time you want to stay. It costs $5.95 a year, plus a 10-percent premium on parking fees (so, here, that 25-cent fee for 15 minutes would jump to 27.5 cents, and $2-an-hour would become $2.20).

Heck, the city could save money in its parking garages by using this system, too — instead of paying those folks to sit in the booth (and they’re never there when I’m trying to leave, anyway), we could pay them to ticket scofflaws in the garage.

Cities love it because, with no way to know if anybody left money in the meter, every person who parks has to pay. But parkers win too: you can pay as you go, without running outside to keep the meter happy. (Of course, feeding the meter beyond the per-spot time limit is technically illegal, but if you think you have 15 minutes’ worth of errands and find it’s taking longer, you can up your payment without leaving the line at the bank.)

And you can get a text message reminding you when your meter is almost up. A possible pitfall: maybe the meter maid will get one too, saying “Check spot 17 on Congress — it has five minutes to go.”

Already happening: Artists working together
Here’s an idea I’d love to claim as my own. But it’s already happening, so I missed my chance.
Inspired by similar shops in other cities, Michelle Rose-Larochelle has opened the PORTLAND ARTIST’S CO-OP in the old Smoothie King space on Temple Street. Thirteen artists are exhibiting work — and all have sold at least one piece in the couple weeks the co-op has been open — and Rose-Larochelle is looking for as many as 30 more.

A jeweler with years of experience working in and managing retail stores for creative works, Rose-Larochelle wants to find local artists willing to work hard at making a living from their creativity.

There’s no need for a super-professional “audition”-type presentation. Just drop her a line, with the subject “Portland Artist’s Co-op,'" to set up a time to stop by with your work — no lighthouses, please.

In exchange for helping with a share of the costs and maybe a once-a-month gig behind the cash register, artists get retail display space and a piece of group-marketing efforts to local, regional, and national buyers, including boutiques and galleries.

It has come together quite quickly, and Rose-Larochelle admits the post-holiday timing could be better. But the Smoothie King space opened up, and she said to her husband, painter Chris Larochelle, “Let’s get it out here and show people it can be done.”

The lease is short-term for the moment — solid only through the end of January — but if more artists (and customers!) participate, she’ll stay. And if not there, “It’ll work someplace,” says Rose-Larochelle, who has already been contacted by a local real-estate company interested in helping find her a permanent space.

The space itself is a big step up from Rose-Larochelle’s garage-gallery in their home in Camp Ellis, open nights and weekends during the summer. If she stays, she wants to use the former kitchen and storage space behind and upstairs from the retail floor as art studios. (Bonus: snacks and smoothie “booster” nutrient supplements are still on the shelves, for those late-night screen-printing marathons.)

This is the first step in Rose-Larochelle’s art-entrepreneur dreams. She wants to start an every-Sunday art festival (based on similar events in London) all along Temple Street with artists making and selling work, musicians performing, and shoppers hitting the downtown at what is now a super-dead time of the week. Rose-Larochelle says that’s just one piece of making Portland’s downtown much more active, by expanding hours shops and restaurants are open to give people who want to spend money places to do it right here.

“We’ve got to make it more appealing for shoppers,” she says. She said it.

Christopher Gray and Meaghan Donaghy contributed to this story.