General Portland Discussion

PWMFlyer said:
MDOT has a RFP for bus service from Lewiston and Portland. The proposed route is from Lewiston to the Portland transportation center via 95 to 295. The talk is to alleviate the parking problem at PWM but no one seems to want to provide service to the jetport..
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www.bangordailynews.com

A commuter bus service could soon connect Portland and Lewiston-Auburn

That commuter bus service could start as soon as this summer and run between the two urban hubs seven days a week.
www.bangordailynews.com www.bangordailynews.com
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Hopefully this bus service gets used more than the Hartford fastrak. Talk about a waste of money for a bus route.
 
Here's the sample schedule from the RFP. I wondered why they wanted to take Washington Ave. all the way in until I realized they want a stop at Monument Square (presumably Elm St. Pulse in reality).

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"Remove Existing Structure and construct parking lot."

Blahhh not what we need here

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Corey said:
Appears there may be action on consolidating public high schools / building a combined campus this year. 'Twas in the superintendent's recent newsletter and there's a slide deck here.

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Well this would be ambitious to say the least. A couple of issues I see: Where are they going to find a new centralized location that can accommodate the current high school population and future growth? And ... how will they deal with the traffic that will be caused by combining all these facilities into one location? Oh wait ... it's the city of Portland ... I'm SURE they have that all figured out. 😒
 
PlantArch said:
Well this would be ambitious to say the least. A couple of issues I see: Where are they going to find a new centralized location that can accommodate the current high school population and future growth? And ... how will they deal with the traffic that will be caused by combining all these facilities into one location? Oh wait ... it's the city of Portland ... I'm SURE they have that all figured out. 😒
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We are dealing with school campus consolidation here in Saco. State DOE is driving the bus in large part because their site-selection and funding matrix heavily favors large lot, drive-to sites off of arterials versus in-town neighborhood elementary schools, several of which are nearly end of life and will be demolished. So, the end result will be the siting of the new campus in the Saco industrial park about one block in from the high capacity traffic sewer that is Route 1, near the car dealerships. We're one of the families who walk our kid to school currently who'll be forced into a car commute (or busing said kid) come 2028. If DOE applies the same site selection criteria to Portland, expect the new campus to be off of Riverside Industrial Parkway or something - not centralized at all.
 
My hunch is that, if it happens, it'll be an expansion of the existing Deering High which will be renamed Portland High. There are legal reasons for it to be in an off-peninsula neighborhood that is not Dougherty Field.
 
markhb said:
My hunch is that, if it happens, it'll be an expansion of the existing Deering High which will be renamed Portland High. There are legal reasons for it to be in an off-peninsula neighborhood that is not Dougherty Field.
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Am curious - what is the legal reason for it to not be at Dougherty Field?

Deering High School does jump out as a relatively central location and plenty of room to build a new school while operating the existing one.

City-owned parcels for reference:
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Corey said:
Am curious - what is the legal reason for it to not be at Dougherty Field?
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The Enabling Act that merged the city of Deering into Portland (which, so far as I know, Deering voted against every time and the Legislature eventually forced it to happen regardless) specifies that the city shall maintain a full-service high school within the bounds of what had been Deering. While today we think of "the peninsula" as being the area within I-295, and the city code defines it as such, the original western boundary was roughly the back lot line between what are now the houses on Mass. Ave. and those on Douglass St. Dougherty Field (which was then a garbage dump, and lasted as such into my parents' memory) was originally part of the City of Portland and therefore doesn't qualify.

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markhb said:
The Enabling Act that merged the city of Deering into Portland (which, so far as I know, Deering voted against every time and the Legislature eventually forced it to happen regardless) specifies that the city shall maintain a full-service high school within the bounds of what had been Deering. While today we think of "the peninsula" as being the area within I-295, and the city code defines it as such, the original western boundary was roughly the back lot line between what are now the houses on Mass. Ave. and those on Douglass St. Dougherty Field (which was then a garbage dump, and lasted as such into my parents' memory) was originally part of the City of Portland and therefore doesn't qualify.
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Interesting, thanks for sharing! Love the map too (shout-out to Cape Elizabeth being on that map as well, am picturing an alternate history where Portland is comprised of additional nearby towns...)
 
Corey said:
Interesting, thanks for sharing! Love the map too (shout-out to Cape Elizabeth being on that map as well, am picturing an alternate history where Portland is comprised of additional nearby towns...)
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You're welcome! South Portland split from Cape Elizabeth right around the same time as the Portland-Deering merger. The original land grant for the Falmouth settlement was essentially the box formed by the north boundary of current Falmouth, the western boundary of Falmouth and Westbrook, and the straight-line southwestern boundary of Westbrook and South Portland, but extended all the way to the water, so in a sense it started the way you describe!
 
Corey said:
Am curious - what is the legal reason for it to not be at Dougherty Field?

Deering High School does jump out as a relatively central location and plenty of room to build a new school while operating the existing one.

City-owned parcels for reference:
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Well the biggest chunk in the middle of the map is Evergreen Cemetery and Baxter Woods. So ... those are technically out. Same goes for some other areas on the peninsula itself. I can't see Payson Park being taken for a HS campus.

Deering does have capacity to be expanded, possibly best achieved if you demolish the diamond-shaped addition on the back and making a better designed school block, maybe with a green space in the middle.

Does this include Casco Bay High School? There's room for expansion there.

Maybe Redfern can turn the existing Portland HS in town into housing like Mercy.
 
This entire intersection area is an unfocused mess. The museum with its stalled expansion plans, the plaza in front with its black tar surface though the rusty surface giant "7" now seems apropos, Congress Square Park with its planned makeover (though it is de facto working well as is), and the Schwartz Building with its empty retail space at the corner. How many years has it been? And the Starbucks has moved on. What's going in there? This area is Portland's "Bermuda Triangle."
 
I'll also point out this map: the Land Bank Commission map of parks, Water District properties and parcels that are part of the Land Bank (yellow). It's interesting to me how much land has been added since the Land Bank was created, including a lot at the end of my street that I had no idea had been added.
 
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