P
Patrick
Guest
When does a friendly rivalry between two New England cities start to become ugly? When there?s talk of luring away a sports franchise. This means war.
Tale of Two Cities
What will those ?cats in Manchester, New Hampshire, pull next: try to steal the Red Sox affiliation away from the Sea Dogs?
?We have the Red Sox and we?re going to keep them here,? vows Portland Sea Dogs? president and general manager Charlie Eshbach.
What provoked this heated response?
Drumming up applause at a soiree at the Better Business Bureau Torch Awards for?of all things?Marketplace Ethics, new Fisher Cats owner Art Solomon raved in November, according to the Union Leader, ??You think if we got the Red Sox to come to New Hampshire it might be a good thing?We?ll try to do our best to do that.?
Portland?s current agreement with the major-league team is set to expire when the 2008 season wraps up.
With the Eastern League investigating Solomon?s taunt, which is illegal under league laws, this dogfight comes at a curious time in the history of the two cities, when Manchester?s star seems to be on the rise and Portland grapples with some very real growth issues.
Buckle Your Seatbelt
Key among these is Portland?s loss of Independence Air, which went belly up in January. This year?s elation following the announcement that jetBlue is beginning service here has been somewhat qualified by that airline?s newly reported troubles.
Meanwhile, some Southern Mainers are surreptitiously [perhaps because they don?t want to seem traitorous] sneaking over to Manchester Airport and its cheap seats, thanks in large part to the presence of Southwest Airlines.
?Why pay $600 to fly to Florida from Portland when I can get there for $60 from Manchester?? a traveler says confidentially.
No one is saying, at least on the record, that an out-and-out rivalry exists between the two cities, but momentum is always a factor in city growth, and trends speak volumes.
Manchester has indeed experienced strong growth in the past few years. According to Chamber of Commerce president Robin Comstock, it all began about a decade ago, ?with the completion of the Route 101 renovation,? giving New Englanders east/west access to Manchester.
?Many stars were moving into orbit,? she says. ?The airport was booming, seacoast businesses in Boston [just 48 miles away from Manchester, while Portland is 98 miles from Boston] could now do business in Manchester, and our mills were being redeveloped.? A series of major expansions at the airport and the 2001 opening of the splashy Verizon Wireless Arena have added to the buzz.
?Everyone asks about Manchester being the new Portland,? she says. ?We?re not. We?re the new Manchester.?
So growth has been fast and furious in the town they call ManchVegas?once because of its lack of entertainment, now because of the wealth of it.
?Manchester has clearly benefited more from its connection to Boston,? says Charles Colgan, professor of public policy at the University of Southern Maine?s Muskie School. ?Portland has been less influenced because of the distance and because there?s been no intervening development along the I-95 corridor, such as there has been in Lowell, Warren, or Salem.?
Assuming, of course, that that?s enviable.
Bragging Rights
The cultural breakdown goes a little like this: Portland has Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Manchester claims Robert Frost (who farmed in nearby Derry for a time). To our Bob Marley, Tim Sample, and Robert Skoglund, they answer with Adam Sandler and Sarah Silverman.
Portland, ?the Paris of the Northeast,? has fashionable Exchange Street. But hold on a second: wasn?t Revlon Corp. started in Manchester?
?Sure, but where?s your lighthouse?? Portlanders fling jokingly back to Manchester. ?And you call that drainage ditch a river??
?Actually, isn?t your lighthouse in South Portland?? is the deadly serious reply. ?And why should Portland compare itself to Manchester in the first place, when there are two cities in New Hampshire with bigger populations than Portland [according to city-data.com, the 2000 Census lists Manchester at 107,006, Nashua 86,605, Portland 64,249].
The Fisher Cats/Red Sox dust-up is not the first bombshell dropped by the Union Leader that sparked controversy between the two cities. Maybe some of the antipathy goes back to the conservative paper?s (then known as the Manchester Union Leader) nasty coverage of the wife of beloved Maine Sen. Edmund S. Muskie when he was frontrunner for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination. When the late Jane Muskie was profiled very closely, Muskie, the former governor and future Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter, objected with emotions so palpable on the TV cameras that it sank his presidential bid.
So the question is, just how deep are the tracks of those tears?
Manchester?s growing prominence is even filtering into the conversations of would-be homeowners, and Vaughan Pratt, senior vice president at LandVest realtors in Portland, says he?s hearing the M-word more often in client conversations than he once did.
?It?s getting a lot of attention, especially after the re-utilization of their mills,? he says. ?They?re rehabbing stores in the old downtown area and their restaurants. It?s doing very well.
?But here?s the difference,? he continues, channeling Colgan. ?Manchester, like Portsmouth, is a Boston feeder community.
Portland is much more of a destination community, and it stands alone?and above the rest.?
Wing and a Prayer
If there is an area of competition, Pratt reaffirms, it really is most obvious in the airport tug-of-war. ?Manchester has gotten some of the discount airlines while Portland still has the traditionals,? he notes. ?So southern Mainers tend to go to Manchester or Boston, where they have more options and cheaper fares.?
J. Brian O?Neill, head of marketing and public relations for the Manchester airport, enjoys counting heads: ?In 2005,? he reports, ?10 percent of our traffic came from southern Maine. That?s 430,000 people.? Way up from 1998, when only .6 percent?or 6,000 Mainers?made the drive.
In fact, Manchester Airport outnumbers the Jetport in other ways as well. It serves 12 airlines, compared with the Jetport?s five. Both facilities have two runways, but at 9,250 feet, Manchester?s main strip stretches 2,000 feet beyond Portland?s longest. Not surprisingly, Manchester employs 2,500 people while only 1,200 workers punch in at PIJ. Manchester has 14 gates, compared to the Jetport?s nine, and five baggage carousels as opposed to Portland?s three. Most telling, however, is that, based on 2005 stats, roughly 83,260 folks passed through Manchester Airport weekly while 27,962 passengers used Portland.
If all of that weren?t enough, there is the lingering taste in many Maine mouths of a 2001 incident involving the internet sites of the two airports. It seems that a disgruntled Jetport employee bought the rights to www.portlandjetport.com and weaved a tangled web indeed when he allegedly linked it to the Manchester Airport site. The Jetport?s site is a dot-net, not a dot-com.
Gregory Hughes deals with such problems daily. He?s marketing manager for the Jetport, and he?s coming off of a record year. In 2005, ?1,454,027 people came through this airport,? he states. ?That?s a 6.5 percent increase over 2004.?
Hitting another record in 2006 looked unlikely until jetBlue signed up to connect the Jetport with New York City?s JFK International. Slated to kick in on May 23, the schedule calls for four daily departures and four arrivals.
?We were hoping for three 100-seaters,? says Hughes. ?We got four 156-seaters. This is mind-boggling, and they?re not putting this equipment in thinking we?re going to fail. This is going to mean so much more convenience for passengers in Maine, New Hampshire, and throughout the Northeast.?
It?s a challenge not only in the summer months but all year round, he says, because business travelers who tend to book last minute can head south to latch onto low-cost fares and avoid what he calls the legacy carriers. ?I can buy a ticket for $500 in Portland or $250 in Manchester. It?s common sense.? More chilling, a Portlander reports his recent ticket to Florida ?cost $65 from Manchester, nonstop; a ticket from Portland was roughly $125, and at least one stop was unavoidable.?
Colgan acknowledges that Manchester is a bigger, more active airfield, which, again, benefits by its Boston connection. ?Everyone says we need to get Southwest into the Jetport,? he says, ?but Southwest?s strategy is to serve metro areas from the fringe airports. The airport issue is a metaphor for the differences between the two cities.?
L.L. Dreams
Richard Donaldson, chairman of the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce, prefers to call Portland?s challenges opportunities.
?We?re constantly seeking growth and development,? says Donaldson, a chamber volunteer who works as senior manager of public affairs for L.L. Bean. ?I think we?ve seen the most progress in the areas of education and health services. But those positives also suggest opportunities. For all of our strength and vibrancy, there are impediments to aspiring business, things like high energy costs, escalating health-care costs, and high tax burdens.?
Not to mention that New Hampshire is tax-free.
Despite the ?opportunities,? Colgan sees many similarities between Portland and Manchester. He says both cities play a similar role in the economies of their relative states. Further, if you were to draw a 100-mile radius around Boston, both are principal cities within that ring, he points out.
Comstock would ?respectfully disagree. Portland is half our size. Manchester was created as an urban center, not as a seaport village that evolved. I?m not delusional; we?re not Los Angeles, but we have more in common with other urban centers than we do with seaport villages.?
Them?s is fightin? words to the folks of the Forest City. ?And for your information, there?s no such thing as a Fisher Cat,? says one wag, hackles up. ?There are fishers, and there are cats. Their mascot?s a myth, just like their inland ?vibrancy.??
Donaldson prefers to take a slightly higher road, however, pointing out that anyone who?s ever outgrown a pair of pants knows growth has a downside, and Portland?s long-standing position as the destination city of New England far outruns its issues, all the natural by-product of growth.
?I won?t speak to the weaknesses of other communities,? says the L.L. Bean exec, ?only to the strengths of our own. This is a very vibrant [that word again] community. If you came through here 25 years ago, you?d have seen a very different place, and that?s something everyone can celebrate.?
How ?vibrant?? Insiders are projecting a population pop after a slight decrease in 2004. ?The population then was 64,049,? says Nelle Hanig, a representative with the city?s economic development division. ?The numbers suggest a slight retreat to the suburban communities around that time.? But 2006 is supposed to bring that close to 65,000, she says.
To make way for that influx, some 80,000 square feet of commercial construction has been completed at 280 Fore Street, says Jack Lufkin, director of Portland?s economic development department?the building is home to accounting firm Baker Newman Noyes.
?Another 50,000-square-feet-plus is either finished or nearing completion. In addition, nearly 700 condominium units are either recently completed or coming online to meet the anticipated demand for in-town space. The gloom and doom that?s been written about is not even a blip around here,? Lufkin says.
And the people who live and work here are tackling those issues head on. ?The quality of life in Portland is defined by more than just the natural beauty of the environment,? says Richard Donaldson. ?It?s defined by our infrastructure as well?the schools, roads, public services, and our higher education. Of course, a high quality of life comes at a fiscal cost, and it?s necessary to maintain communication with key constituents, our business and community leaders, to mitigate those costs.?
Even the airport issue is bound to be short-lived, and Hughes reports that the Jetport is actively pursuing more low-cost fliers. What?s more, there is some talk that Southwest may change its fringe-city strategy.
?This industry is in a constant state of change,? he says. ?We may not fit Southwest?s blueprint this year, but in a year we may. In the meantime, there are some really good possibilities out there for us, and I spend more than 50 percent of my time keeping them informed about the benefits of the Jetport.?
Prime among those benefits is that the Jetport can fill the seats, and Hughes points out that ?while Independence Air had a system-wide load factor of 47 percent, the Jetport delivered the airline a nearly 55 percent capacity??the highest in the nation for the defunct carrier. ?We can fill the seats,? he says.
True, Portland?s 30-year-old civic center doesn?t quite gleam like Verizon Wireless Arena, but it?s what?s inside that counts. ?The city is full of culture, and it?s full of life,? says realtor Vaughan Pratt, ?even in the winter. The restaurants are bustling, the museum is setting attendance records, and the concert association is bringing in acts from all over the world.?
Objective View
To see the tie-breaker, Pratt says, just look out the window.
?Yes, Manchester has the advantage of being closer to Boston,? says Charles Colgan. ?But Portland has the advantage of Casco Bay and the harbor and the coastal resources, all of which give it a distinct quality-of-life advantage over Manchester, and while Manchester has grown well beyond its mill-town legacy, it still doesn?t have the natural amenities that Portland has.?
As Pratt observes, ?It?s almost scary how good it is to live here??
So go ahead, Manchester, give it your best shot. We?re throwing down the gauntlet. No matter how close to Boston you are, you?ll never be in Maine.
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One City?s Potshot Is Another?s Cheap Shot
Steve Guilmette, a comedian from Windham, New Hampshire, laughs, ?We?ve got the Merrimack River. If the textile industry ever comes back, we?re poised for success.? Asked about that puzzling team the ?Fisher Cats,? Guilmette speculates, ?I think they kind of made that up. We don?t have a lot of zoos here, but I don?t think that?s a real animal. Our claim to fame, the Verizon Center,? he continues, ?has some of the biggest washed-up acts in the business.? So who?s side is he on, anyway? ?I work both locations, but when I?m in Portland I talk much slower.?
Sounds like he wants a fight. ?Maybe if Portland could get the smell of fish out of the town it would attract more tourists. But, overall, we could almost be sister cities?sisters who don?t speak. Stepsister cities.? Hmmmm.
?You have lobster and clam chowder, we have roast beef sandwiches and steak-and-cheeses. You can get one on any street corner. You can?t walk a block without running into a steak-and-cheese. You can even buy one with Canadian money.?
Asked about that strip of turnpike through New Hampshire with the usurious tolls, Guilmette says, ?We capture all the tourists in New Hampshire, and let the ones without money go through to Maine.?
The Race Is On
?Portland ranks No. 1 on American City Business Journals? Small Business Vitality Study, January 2005
?Portland ranks No. 26 on ntrepreneur.com?s Hot Cities for Entrepreneurs 2005; Manchester did not place
?Manchester ranks No. 21 on Inc. magazine?s Best Places 2005, Portland is No. 32
?Portland is named Bike Town USA, Bicycling magazine, January/February 2004
?Portland listed (no rankings) among Outside magazine?s 10 Dream Towns USA 1999; Manchester not listed
SOURCE: http://www.maine.rr.com/06/portmag/manchester/default.asp
