It’s time to take the “Civic” out of the Center

  Portland was looking pretty down and out back in the mid-seventies. The forest city had just gone through a brutal period of Urban Renewal; Results of which saw the severing of the city in two by an interstate, a massive swath of Bayside obliterated with the Franklin Art and the removal of many blocks in the center of the city to make way for the Spring Street jetliner runway.

  For the latter, I can imagine the area “powers that be” decided they needed something to jazz the street up and bring it to life. Also, Portland didn’t have a venue larger than 3,000 seats with which to attract national acts that would bring people with their money into the city.

  In 1977, the Cumberland County Civic Center was born.

  And at the time, it was not only a great idea but sorely needed. Things here in Portland then seemed like they do now in places like Las Vegas. The economy just quickly died, leaving a formerly prosperous city figuring out what to do about it. And to a huge degree, the Civic Center and the business it brought here helped to make today’s Portland one of the most (long-term) economically viable and desirable places in this country to live.

  But the whole Greater Portland area has grown up from those times. We have morphed from a little city with a bunch of farmland around it to the economic nucleus which props-up the rest of this state, no matter what our Governor might think of us. We no longer need to publically subsidize large multi-purpose spaces.

  You only need to look to the awesome plan for Thompson’s Point for proof. While this wouldn’t be the case 30 years ago, Portland is viable enough now for a group of private investors to spend massive amounts of money to build an arena ten times better than the Civic Center that can perform all its major functions.

  It’s time to open the whole drab Civic Center area up to investors that could potentially create another awesome project out of it. Government is learning right now that they can’t build and operate this kind of project any more, and probably shouldn’t have in the first place. So, here we are. Now, we need to convince our government to get out of the arena business and put it up for sale. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still spend the 33 million dollars you might, but shouldn’t decide to spend to renovate it.

  That kind of money needs to be spent to further improve Portland’s future. The money could go a long way to building a light rail trolley system that has tracks coming in from Westbrook, Riverton, No Deering, the Jetport and South Portland. You could even use it to do something radical with the Franklin Street corridor. With homelessness on the rise, a permanent homeless solution could be found and funded, enabling the further revitalization of the Elm/Preble/Oxford portion of Bayside. Most of all, we could feed every mouth in this region by quickly re-establishing our local food system that grows and raises everything we need within a quick horse cart ride.

  But for any government entity to continue to publically subsidize these types of large twentieth century public arenas, when as we’re seeing now everywhere with debt that publicly subsiding anything doesn’t sustain itself long-term, seems like a bad idea to me. That money, that reported ten extra dollars on the county portion of the property tax bill, can be better spent elsewhere.

What will the game changer be?

  I feel that we’re in a moment of flux. The bread and circuses parade that is one-two-ing us at every turn with murder trials of pretty white girls, perjury trials of sports figures, rape trials of top level monetary policy makers, ineffectual congressmen and media conglomerate malfeasance is swamping the airwaves. Everything presented to us feels contrived in a fashion that seems to serve one purpose: To focus our instinctual abilities away from what may lie ahead.

  A few weeks ago I asked if “you could feel it,” but found out from readers that while there was certainly a feeling of something not right in the world, it was impossible to put a finger on exactly what “it” is.

  Human nature is a phenomenal force in this universe. One of the most phenomenal things about it is that as a human, you are remiss to try to explain in a five paragraph essay its intricacies, and an attempt to do so would be an act of arrogance. Sometimes our place in this world is best explained in one’s gut; on your own and to yourself. In my gut I know that everything we’re being spoon-fed by the media machine in these last ten years has nothing to do with, and is not sufficiently preparing us for what’s to come.

  What my inner gut is telling me when I talk to people, when I stop to feel how nature is acting while outside gardening, when I read what people in local humanitarian organizations are saying, is that people are sensing something big is afoot - A game changer. But in what form will that game changer manifest itself?

  Will it be governmental? Will government end its corruptive ways on its own and return itself to being for and by the people without the engagement of the citizenry? It seems as if the United States has passed the point of no return in this regard. Will it come in the form of a massive change in our government with the help of a modern-day Spartacus to lead us to revolution? There is certainly a case to be made for that in the history annals of human civilization. Will government perform yet another black flag operation to further oppress us and take away more of our freedoms? Nothing hides economic malaise better than an allowed attack on a harbor or a metropolitan building complex to provide tens of thousands of jobs in the industrial military complex or in airports ripping off Grammy’s diaper.

  Will it be natural? Will the changes to our earth increase at a faster clip? The weather over the last few years and the steady increase in seismic activity certainly adds to the feeling. Massive dust storms in Phoenix and massive draught in many parts of the world are even making the headlines on a daily basis.

  Or, will it be cosmic? Will there be something to Hopi prophecy and the end of the Mayan calendar? Could it be that we are witnessing the death throes of a global control structure designed to oppress? Everything we think we know and have been told or taught could be deemed unimportant and we could be playing witness to a human enlightenment that reveals the truths about ourselves and our place in the universe. We could potentially be the witnesses of something beautiful. God, I truly hope that is what this feeling is. I can’t take an extension and continuation of the now; and a World War exploding out of the untelevised monetary, resource and cyber battles going on between the sovereigns of the world right now is something no sane human being wants.

  Whatever the game changer may be, this surreal period in time we find ourselves living will be rapidly exposed for what it is or isn’t. My gut is telling me that “it,” in whatever form “it” takes, is going to make itself known sooner rather than later. I can’t wait.

  So if you can feel it, hang in there. “It” is coming soon.

Scuttling the Hannaford brand is ‘essentially’ hard to swallow

  Three weeks ago my wife, son and I were enjoying dinner at a friend’s home when I noticed the latest addition to their mustard collection. My friend Drew is somewhat of a mustard connoisseur. We both believe that our mustards need to be hot – very hot. Hot enough to require the assistance of the fire department-hot. We discussed different mustard brand names when the conversation turned into a discussion of different brand names in general. Then, Drew turned to me and said “What I really don’t like is how Hannaford has replaced their Hannaford brand with something called My Essentials.”

  This was news to me. I usually go grocery shopping once every two weeks. I told him that I hadn’t seen the My Essentials cans on the shelves at my Forest Ave Hannaford and supposed that he was mistaken and the My Essentials was just an additional brand brought into the store. I couldn’t imagine that Hannaford Brothers would scuttle a long-known brand that to a lot of Mainers is considered a “name brand,” as opposed to a cheap-looking “store brand” like, say, Wal-mart’s “Great Value.”

  Come to find out, Drew was right.

Saying 'so long' to yet another Maine brand

  I was at the Forest Ave Hannaford last Saturday morning doing my “grocery thang.” I navigated through the veggies, grabbed a couple things from the deli and rounded isle four to grab a couple cans of Hannaford French-Style Green Beans. I looked down to the middle row where before me was a sea of canned green beans and couldn’t find it. Focusing harder, there it was. The My Essentials French Style Green Beans stacked oh so neatly with a little one inch by one inch sticker that confirmed Drew’s story. The sign read, printed in a super-small 6 point font, “This My Essentials product has replaced the Hannaford Brand.”

  I picked up a can and gave it a gander. It was cheap-looking. The font describing the product, the picture of the beans and the white background looked as though they had been focus-grouped down in some white-walled room in Arkansas. One could literally cut out a “Great Value” label from a Wal-Mart can, paste it over My Essentials and not tell the difference. I put the can down, picked up a can of Green Giant, and continued shopping. As I did, I noticed the slow rotation that was gradually replacing most of the Hannaford products I had been used to buying for so many years. It was awful.

  After I left the store, knowing full well that more than likely the products were the same contents with just a different label, I asked myself whether this brand change was something that was bothering just me and Drew, as we’re both a little quirky. I certainly hadn’t seen anything in the news about the change and it seems as though Hannaford is trying to quietly extinguish the Hannaford brand in the stores. After a little search, I found out we were not alone.

  I discovered an online message forum that was full of messages from Hannaford customers that shared the same feelings. Comments included “My Essentials sounds lame, bland and cheap” and “As a Mainer, it’s kind of depressing to see Hannaford losing its regional identity.” The last quote served to describe exactly how I feel.

  In stories about Hannaford-parent Delhaize America’s decision to replace all of their store brands, including the Sweet Bay and Food Lion chains’ individual banners with My Essentials, Delhaize explains that they want to increase sales of their generic foods in all their stores. In all their chains, with the exception of Hannaford, it appears that their store brands were not performing well, and My Essentials was the answer to turn that part of their business around. The My Essentials switcharoo has apparently been in the works since July of last year, as a quick search for the My Essentials trademark with the U.S. Trademark office shows that the My Essentials trademark was filed on July 29, 2010. In their other chains, the change to My Essentials is being heralded in the stores and in the media as a good thing. In Hannaford country, it’s happening quietly. Why? It is because it’s a bad idea for the Hannaford chain.

  From a global corporate governance standpoint, the change makes sense. Delhaize will save money by only having to produce one product for all their stores. They even insist that having one brand will enable them to better leverage themselves when purchasing from suppliers. And, the increased sales they expect will certainly reap benefits for investors. Maybe their plan to increase profits in all their stores, even if there is a little dip at Hannaford from formerly-loyal customers, is more clandestine. In one online comment, a Hannaford customer writes: “The rollout of My Essentials at DZA's Hannaford banner is off to a rocky start. Shoppers have noticed, for example, that the 8 ounce light yogurt under the Hannaford brand has been replaced by a 6 ounce My Essentials container with no price change to account for the 25% shrinkage.”

  But to me, if there are enough people that feel the same way I do about the Hannaford brand going the way of Jordan’s Ball Park Franks and Deering Ice Cream, the increased revenue Delhaize is forecasting from increased sales at their other chains and charging the same price for less could potentially be off set by a large decrease of store brand sales in their Hannaford stores. Then what? Will they scuttle the name all together and one day invite us to shop at the Forest Avenue Food Lion? The quick wave of the hand and executive board room decision thousands of miles away from Portland that eliminated the Hannaford brand could make that happen, too. Hannaford would of course claim this would never happen, but what would the leaders of Hannaford say about discontinuing the Hannaford brand if asked in 2006?

  So for me, because nothing says “I’m cheap” to dinner guests like a spice rack full of cheap-looking spice bottles, when my bottle of Hannaford Basil Leaves runs out, I’ll spend the extra buck and buy McCormick, all the while lamenting over the loss of yet another Maine brand to global corporatism.

Let’s give Forest Avenue the “Main Street” treatment it deserves

   It’s starting to come together.

   Forest Avenue, for years victim to the automotive age with its wide expanse, barren landscape and an overall feel that makes you want to do exactly what the road is currently designed for – drive right through it – is being thoroughly studied by an official city committee for aesthetic, pedestrian, public transport and even traffic flow improvement.

   Available for public consumption at portlandmaine.gov/forestave.htm, the plan is a great start. I love the way the design team has included more trees, lighting fixtures that are sure to attract foot traffic after sunset, brick crosswalks, and bike lanes. The plan, which starts at Woodford’s Corner and heads inbound right up to the interchange with 295, serves to reconnect us Deering types with the rest of the city.

   Landlords along the entire stretch who may have a hard time finding tenants will suddenly find themselves staring at waiting lists of businesses looking to locate here. Because Forest Avenue has been treated like a slow-speed turnpike over the last 40 years, there just hasn’t been much incentive to do anymore than standard upkeep. Building owners, noticing the changes, will want to make aesthetic improvements to their buildings to attract higher rents.

   The first thing I think of as a Portland taxpayer, of course, is the cost of all these changes. But it seems to me that a major investment on what is THE main street for this side of town will only serve to pay itself back many times over. Based on the presentation I saw, building values and hence tax revenue is sure to go up. Fees collected from building permits issued to landlords, businesses and even homeowners looking to capitalize on the revitalization for increased equity, cash flow and value will add to the pot. The new jobs that could be potentially created at any new business and the retail or service sales they garner will only serve to improve our local economy as a whole.

   No initial plan is perfect, and there are some things that I would like to see that are missing. The Metro is a great service, but as anyone who takes the 2 bus inbound can attest, it’s not particularly reliable time-wise once car traffic picks up. It may be the pipe dream of a train-enthusiast; but a dedicated, center track trolley going all the way from Riverton to Congress Street would do a lot to not only get people in to town, but also attract peninsula-dwellers to Forest Avenue to help pay for the improvements in the plan with their commerce.

   I would also like to see more formal planning surrounding the exit 6 interchange with 295. The Maine DOT has put off performing any improvement work, which is badly needed no matter what for safety alone, until our local study is complete. Before making any changes to exit 6, the DOT will take the city’s findings into consideration. No matter what they come up with for an exit layout, a huge key to a successful reconnection of Forest Avenue with the peninsula would be to eliminate the ability of vehicles to simply yield and instead make them come to a complete stop when exiting the highway. It is too dangerous to walk beneath 295 any other way.

   The final wish of mine lands squarely in the hands of the University of Southern Maine. USM owns the building that serves as not only the gateway to their campus, but also as the gateway to Forest Avenue. For the last few years, the front of the building facing our “main street” has been locked shut.

   On the website for the Glickman Family Library, the university claims the building was designed to “symbolize a gateway to USM, and to serve as a tangible reminder of USM’s presence in the community.” Former University President Richard Pattenaude even spoke about the important symbolism of having the front door facing outward toward the community in his library dedication speech. Today, the only way to enter the building is around back and the inviting picnic tables that used to encourage students to gather on the front patio have been removed. The front of the building is also now especially unwelcoming at night, as when the sun ends its day, so too does any light in the front of Glickman. The library’s neighbor, Oakhurst, has done its part for the block by renovating the building that used to house World Over Imports; the university needs to “tear down that wall,” or at the very least, unlock the front door and flip on a light at night.

   All in all, plans designed by cities can never be all things to all people. The Forest Avenue Transition plan, even in these early stages, is about as close to accomplishing that feat as I have seen come from the city in a long time. If the city, businesses, homeowners, the state DOT and USM can all come together, and some add-ons mentioned here or brought forth by others can be molded in, this project would be everything 1970’s Urban Renewal wasn’t and the “all things” I never thought possible.

   To get there, it certainly deserves the support of us all.

(Jeffrey S. Spofford is the circulation manager for The Portland Daily Sun and can be reached by emailing jspofford@maine.rr.com.) 

Portland’s Transition Trifecta

  In the movie “Back to the Future, Part 2,” my favorite of the trilogy, after travelling forward to the year 2015 and then returning to 1985, Marty McFly discovered a very different place than the one from which he left. To find out what happened to turn his sedate suburb into the chaotic place it had become, he sought out Doc Brown who dusted off his chalkboard to illustrate what had happened.

  Doc drew a straight line to illustrate the timeline of events that served to create the world which Marty had always known, then drew another line that took off from the same starting point and went up at an angle to display the alternate, less savory timeline in which they found themselves.



The DeLorean

  With the large-scale changes in the upper management of our city this year at city hall with the new city manager, at the police department with the exit of Chief Craig and the upcoming mayoral election, I feel like we’re at a starting point in the timeline of Portland’s future. The exciting (and occasionally worrisome) part is that the outcome could go either way.

  It’s really too bad for the city that Chief Craig is departing. Craig brought a level of professionalism and leadership to the position that was sorely needed. The neighborhood policing program, improving relations with folks who have moved here from away and a drop in crime are all held securely in his belt. Looking to the future, while I understand Councilor Donaghue’s concerns about hiring from within, to not do so would be to squander the great results we got from a big city professional the likes of which we may never see again in our humble abode. A new person coming in from away would naturally want to shake things up and do it his or her own way. Going with someone currently on our force who has a long term commitment to Portland and has worked under Craig is the way to go to grow on his successes.

  Mark Rees is starting soon as our new city manager. The city manager position is an example of one that needed the same treatment with regard to hiring that the police chief position received two years ago. Instead of an automatic internal promotion our council actually did the right thing and conducted a nationwide search to find the right fit. I feel really good about Rees. Typically, online posts or editorial responses to news stories lean toward the negative. In the Eagle Tribune, the hometown newspaper of Rees’ current town, North Andover, Massachusetts, reactions to his departure were those of sadness and well wishes. One comment that stuck with me in particular was along the lines of “We lost the only person in town hall with any common sense.” That’s exactly what the ‘doc’ ordered here.

  As to our future mayor, it’s still too early to tell at what angle the future timeline will pencil out to be. Two percent of the population seems to be running, and although they’re all out with their various slogans and position statements, no one is yet leading the pack for me. But in this case, no matter the outcome, having an elected mayor promises to be a good thing for Portland that, due to the lack of power the mayor will have, at the very least shouldn’t create the nightmare version of 1985 from the movie.

  So, no matter what horrible things happen around the world or in our country in the future, Portland’s timeline, courtesy of this transition trifecta, is looking bright. It could still go either way, of course, but that is what is making these times in which we live exciting ones to be a Portlander!

(Jeffrey S. Spofford is the head paperboy for The Portland Daily Sun)

K-9’s, Casco Bay High and Graffiti, oh my!

POLICE DOGGIES AT PORTLAND HIGH

I see there have been some “behind the scenes” discussions on allowing police dogs to roam the halls of Portland High School looking for students that are the end-users of the drugs police are failing to prevent entering the city. An award-winning bad idea, we may as well skip the K-9‘s and go right for the promotion of the environment the dogs would create and install iron jail bars on the windows of the school.

See, when you treat a human being, which is what the kids that attend Portland High School are despite adult attempts at treating them anything but, like criminals, the result will be a student populace that will act out as such. The fault for the perceived drug problem at the Portland high schools lie not with the students who posses the drugs, but with the police department that allows the sale of said drugs on the street. Because the department has failed in that regard, the obvious scapegoat is the most vulnerable one: a person who has little recourse in a juvenile criminal system set up to ruin rather than improve the lives of kids buying the drugs that shouldn’t be here in the first place.

Allowing doggies to roam the halls not only disenfranchises end users found in possession, but also students who want nothing to do with the drug culture that are forced to, in 1939 German parlance “show their papers,” and in this instance “omit their scent.” At least with the newly installed iron jail bars in the windows, all students would know upon gazing at the building before entry that the system is one that is out to get them, whether they’re high or not.

CASCO BAY HIGH SCHOOL

In last Friday’s Daily Sun, I saw that Casco Bay High School received a glowing report from the “second best” and less expensive accreditation firm Great Schools Partnership. I have been a student at a High School going through accreditation with the high-class firm New England Association of Schools and Colleges and while the “Partnership’s” process might be more thorough, I would tend to doubt it.

At Kennebunk High School in 1994, the school was up for accreditation and needed to have a team of people come visit the school for two weeks. Teachers spent a month leading up to that time cleaning their classrooms, putting up displays that served to excite the visiting education “professionals,” and beat into the student populace that not only had we better behave, but that the visiting evaluators would be talking with a small group of random students and that it would be appreciated, if we were selected, to offer positive anecdotes about the school. Seeing as how that was going to be a stretch, we were even offered small “cheat sheets” as to what we might say. Going the extra mile the school, having removed stall doors in the rest rooms to deter smoking there, put them back on for the very special visit.

Did Casco Bay High School resort to these sorts of shenanigans to get their glowing report? It’s happened before. Is it the exemplary place of learning that was outlined in this independent report? Probably not.

GRAFFITI REDUX

Congratulations to the city council for getting the Suslovic Graffiti Law passed. It was toned down a bit, removing the language that insisted a building owner in the city submit a plan for removal of graffiti if said owner was victimized because the police department and city failed to prevent it from happening in the first place. I suppose the backlash from homeowners was a little more a council with three mayoral candidates on it could take. The amended ordinance fines homeowners only if the city has to remove the markings. I wouldn’t expect a major increase in revenue from the fine with the city in charge of removal, as they’re unable and unwilling to remove graffiti defacing city property as it is. I was a little disappointed, as I was looking forward to submitting my plan to the city if I were marked. It would have made for an entertaining read.

I would have even run it here.

(Jeffrey S. Spofford is the circulation manager for The Portland Daily Sun and can be found online at spoffordnews.com)

Things Aren’t Going Well

   Things are quickly deteriorating around the world despite the main stream media’s contention that the major concern facing our country is the future of a horny New York congressman’s tenure in a governmental body that over the last 20 years have performed acts against us more corrupt and heinous than a few pictures of Weiner’s underpants.

   What started as a neatly packaged uprising in North Africa amongst people marketed to us as radical Muslims, but are really just people on the same planet as you and I who happen to pray to a different god, has now jumped north across the Mediterranean Sea to countries with people who have a lot more in common with us in appearance and lifestyle.

   People in Greece have taken to the streets to oppose vast austerity measures the Greek government needs to implement in order to satisfy their debt to the European Central Bank, the European equivalent to our privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. The people there are angry at the prospect of their government’s having to pay back, at interest, money irresponsibly loaned to it to inflate their economy and lifestyles beyond their natural means. The movement is being billed to us here as a simple uprising. Locally, in Greek newspapers, blogs, twitter feeds and on the streets it is being discussed among the people as a revolution ever as strong as what we witnessed in Egypt.

   The collapse of the European Union doesn’t stop in Greece. Just yesterday, the Irish government, in response to people demonstrating there, rebuked the European Central Bank’s demand that instead of default they accept loans to prop up their banks and insure their investor’s large monetary position in them. The troubles in Spain and Portugal continue as well. In Germany and France, the countries that have been propping them all up, people have begun to protest any additional monetary assistance for the “PIIGS.” With the continuing unrest, which will only grow when this spring’s worldwide drought starts to interrupt food supply and energy shortages there continue to crimp growth, the disintegration of the European Union is now less theory and more realistic outcome.

   Across the globe in China, even with the information barriers set up to keep internal affairs under wraps, news is starting to trickle out from Reuters and other international news agencies that huge protests and “serious rioting” is beginning to break out in large Chinese metropolitan areas. People involved in these protests aren’t holding placards; they’re bombing government buildings and fighting police. China supplies all our plastic pumpkins. Get yours now before supplies run out.

   Japan’s troubles continue unabated. Three reactors at the Fukushima plant are still in a state of meltdown. Even in the most civil society on earth, people there have protested the continued use of nuclear power, resulting in the shutdown of not only Fukushima but other nuclear reactors in the country. Enough power capacity has been permanently lost to stifle, if not stop, production of most products that support everything technology-based in the world. Simply put, I wouldn’t expect to see an IPad 3 anytime soon, if ever.

   Here at home, we’re told everything is fine. Sure, there are some problems, but people in government are working on it and certainly will have them fixed and the country back on the road to prosperity in no time. But are we still believing the same government that brought us to Iraq to extinguish WMDs; Told us the bailouts would jump start things for us when they simply preserved the wealth of others; Insisted in the early 2000’s that the best investment a family could make was in real estate because values would could go nowhere but up; Implied that we would return to due process for our enemies by closing military detention camps, ending torture, and bringing supposed combatants to trial in an open court of law?

   I’m not.

   We would be in the same predicament as the rest of the world right now if it wasn’t for the wars we manufactured under false pretenses but under the reality that we needed to send our men and women in to Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya for oil to fuel our economy. We would be in a hole deeper than all the “PIIGS” combined if it weren’t for the private bank that issues our currency propping up markets and raiding our treasury to throw money at the big banks. How long is the rest of the world, equally starved of energy and suffering financial turmoil, going to allow us to continue to wreck sovereignty in the name of the American way of life? How long are other countries going to allow us to “take it all” for ourselves killing whoever and destroying whatever lay in our path?

   Tensions are building everywhere, and the civil unrest that is spreading around the globe will find it’s way here when the people of the world, including the American people, take a stand against the corrupt federal government. We’ve all allowed it to go on too long and now it’s beyond repair.

   It’s time to prepare for that reality.

(Jeffrey S. Spofford is the circulation manager for The Portland Daily Sun. His column appears Fridays.)