Portland Bayside

Those glass buildings along chestnut street and its neighboring bi-secting road are well over 80 feet tall, even though the tallest one is only 8-stories in the rendering. The way you can tell this is by comparing the nearby parking garage's height with the tallest building in the pic. That parking garage is supposed to be 7 levels, and each level should be at least ten feet. This looks about right when you compare it to the 4-story DHS building nearby. But then when you look at the 8 story glass building they want to build, it is nearly twice as tall as the 7 level garage, implying that it is most likely around 120 feel or so, or in other words, about the same height as an 11-story building, say, the holiday inn by the bay.
 
Judge says scrap yard must obey city rules


E. Perry Iron & Metal Co. must comply with scrap-metal recycling regulations enacted by Portland in 2004, a judge decided this week in Cumberland County Superior Court.
E. Perry is one of two scrap-metal yards that city officials are trying to move out of Bayside, a downtown district that is being transformed by residential and commercial development.
The City Council unanimously approved environmental regulations in September 2004 that require scrap yards in Portland to test for and clean up any soil or groundwater contamination at their own expense.
The new rules also require the businesses to control noise and build fences high enough to screen rusting metal piles that sometimes rise 25 feet above Lancaster and Somerset streets.
City officials said the regulations provide stricter oversight than state or federal laws. Scrap yards must submit a variety of maps, waste-handling information and test results to receive yearly operating permits.
E. Perry refused to follow the new rules and filed a court appeal claiming that Portland officials had developed them to force the company out of Bayside.
Justice Thomas Delahanty ruled on Tuesday that E. Perry had failed to prove that the city targeted or discriminated against the scrap yard in applying the new regulations.
Delahanty also found the regulations valid, writing in his decision that "protecting the environment is a legitimate municipal goal."
E. Perry has until Feb. 21 to appeal the decision to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, city attorney Gary Wood said Thursday.
"If they don't, they're going to have to comply the same as any other scrap yard in the city," Wood said. The regulations apply to five businesses in Portland, he said.
Alan Lerman, E. Perry's owner, could not be reached for comment. City officials recently gave him until March 3 to accept a final offer of as much as $1 million in federal funding to defray the cost of moving the scrap yard.
The other Bayside scrap yard, New England Metal Recycling, is on track to move to 13 acres at 636 Riverside St. by 2008. The city gave that company $1 million for relocation costs and $645,000 for less than one acre on Somerset Street, where the city is developing a parking garage.
The City Council decided in December 2005 to spend $5 million for 53 acres owned by Lucas Tree Experts off Riverside Street, to provide a place for both scrap yards and Portland's public works facilities.
When negotiations with E. Perry faltered, city officials said, they decided to sell 13 acres to New England Metal. At the time, Lerman said he had been cut out of the deal.
Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:
kbouchard@pressherald.com


Reader comments


1-5 of 5 comments:



Misty of Portland, ME
Feb 9, 2007 1:43 PM
Paula, please give us all a break. This is a Portland business that is being forced out of the area that they own. If the city can?t take it by eminent domain they will create rules so that it becomes harder and harder to do business. Don?t get me wrong, I agree with testing for ground contamination. That has gone on long enough and needs to be addressed. As far as having to look at it as you leave the ?Organic Food? store, too bad. Don?t you realize that a ?junk yard? is providing a valuable service to you, your children, ensuing generations and the environment by RECYCLING? Would you rather your neighbors just retired their old vehicles, refrigerators, stoves, old pipes, etc. in their back yard next to you and let them rust, like we use to? You can?t have it both ways.

I personally find the yard fascinating and what goes on there. Yes, it slows my commute in the morning when trucks are backing in, much to my chagrin. The wheels of commerce don?t always turn that fast! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and fortunately we don?t all have the same eye. If I find your yard an eyesore offending my sensibilities should I have the city council force you to put up a 25 foot fence around your property at your expense?

Once the last manufacturing business leaves Portland we are left with low paying, dead end service jobs, except for the lawyers who will find some way to litigate more money out of someone?s pocket.

Let's give business a chance to succeed in Portland without being regulated and code engineered out of business or the city. Can you say Hooters or Dunkin' Donuts?


joe re of Gardiner, ME
Feb 9, 2007 12:45 PM
That whole area is so developed analyzing soil and groundwater, then trying to clean it up is an impossible task and would be a Superfund site in no time. A cleanup there would cost millions..easily.

I have to agree with Perry in that the environmental regulation was enacted to drive them out.




ck of Prov, RI
Feb 9, 2007 11:15 AM
Bayside's biggest eyesore is the subsidized housing in Kennedy Park, why doesn't the city order that area to have a 25' fence built around the perimeter to hide the obvious rotting neighborhood.
The city has much larger problems then worrying about a business that is a positive financial contributor to the city and state... What hypocrisy by the city.


jules of Falmouth, ME
Feb 9, 2007 10:11 AM
Just another way for the city to try and get what they want without paying the price.


Paula Weitz of Portland, ME
Feb 9, 2007 9:33 AM
As someone who lives in the area, I am glad someone finally decided that something has to be done...Not to test the ground contamination that has gone on for years borders on ridulous. If these scrap yards had been in other areas of the city it would have been immediate. The owner's have known that there would be no follow-thru by the powers that be, so they could do anything they pleased in this area....That is why it has been called blighted. Now that they are trying to gentrify this area all bets are off, and we will see upgrades. Can you imagine buying Organic Foods and then having to face the rusted and filthy face of the "Junk Yards" as we drove out of the parking lot....fit would ofend our Sensiblities.
 
Just drove by Whole Foods, it just opened today. There is a line of cars down the street and absolutely no parking spots open. Even cops there watching the traffic. Pretty crazy in a storm like this.
 
All those cars are delivery men dropping off lobsters from NH!

I cant wait for bayside to pick up the pace of development, what a cool place it will be. what a prime development opportunity that has been overlooked for far too long...I wonder why they are just thinking of redeveloping it now??
 
Drove by again today and it's the same story. Cops and people parking way down the street. Damn, I'm never gonna get to go.

Should help out selling the area to investors. Showing how much business and people are willing to go down there.
 
yeah, a lot of people should really help sell the area to potential future developers. I mean, portlandis the most urban area north of boston (and boston sprawl, like So NH) and bayside is its most accessible region. That sounds like a winning combination to me. right next to the interstate. everyone knows all of the professionals who work in portland dont actually live in the city...they are from the burbs....so I bet that bayside will draw all of the burb traffic and become a major office building section, not unlike our central business district along congress street is today.
 
I was kind of skeptical of 3 natural grocery stores existing within 2 minutes of each other would be a good business idea. Actually, I'm still quite skeptical. :p
 
whole foods and the whole grocer are the same company, after a merger last year. what is the third one I am missing?

Whole Foods Market debuts in
p-wholefoods-021407web.jpg


PORTLAND ? There?s a berry island, a candy island and a seafood soup bar. A cotton candy machine, an Italian restaurant and a coffee shop.

And oh yes, lots of groceries, too.

Whole Foods Market was set to open today on Somerset Street in the burgeoning Bayside neighborhood. At 48,000 square feet it is Portland?s largest grocery store, but a walk through the building last week proved the supermarket is easy to navigate and out to appeal to the senses of shoppers ? and diners.

The Texas-based supermarket chain is pushing the local angle in Portland, the company?s first Maine store among its 190 locations in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Barbara Gulino, marketing director for Whole Foods in Portland, said that while the store will carry produce and other Maine products, the company views New England and even Nova Scotia as part of the ?local? area. In the produce section, signs hang over display cases highlighting growers like a farmer in Connecticut or a potato harvester in northern Maine.

Because Whole Foods bought out the independently owned Whole Grocer last year, the store has contracted with many of the Maine growers who supplied goods to Whole Grocer and has also absorbed the Whole Grocer staff.

Along with its now (in?)famous live lobster tank, Whole Foods has a substantial seafood section, including a soup bar where a daily chowder or bisque is hot and ready to go.

Six display racks of wine and an in-house wine buyer separate the seafood section from the traditional grocery aisles and the large personal-care products section.

Gulino said most departments have in-store buyers. Many of them were scurrying around last week, stocking shelves in preparation for the Valentine?s Day opening and, more immediately, the 1,000 expected guests who signed up for Monday tours of the store.

What Whole Foods is most famous for is its extensive selection of prepared foods. The Portland store features a gelato bar, a candy bar specializing in store-made truffles and a taffy-pulling station along with the more traditional soup and salad bars and a cake section. A long display offers ready-to-go sandwiches and other prepared meals. A hearth oven was installed in the store for making pizza, paninis and other prepared-to-order foods.

There is a sit-down sushi bar at the front of the store and a trattoria where shoppers can sit at the bar or at one of the tables in the glass-enclosed eating area and order Italian dishes.

Tables and chairs also line a wall past the check-out stations.

Gulino, a former cooking instructor from Cape Elizabeth who has often appeared on local television shows, said she plans to organize weekly events for customers and once-a-month wine tastings in that department.

?We really want this to be a community space,? she said.

Kate Bucklin can be reached at 781-3661 ext. 106 or kbucklin@theforecaster.net.
 
I just came from there. What an incredible place! I'm no hippie, but there was plenty of stuff for me in there. The italian restaurant looks really nice. Local beers were pretty cheap. The fruits and veggies look fake, they are that fresh and clean looking. The salad bar had like fifty different things you could pick from. Sushi bar was next to the pizza place. Very impressed.

There are only two natural stores down there now, Whole Grocer is closed.
 
I checked out the new supermarket today--it really was phenomenal. I had to live park in front of a fire hydrant just to take a quick peek, and people were yelling and beeping at me. It was swamped with activity and people...hundreds of people were there. I really like how it has added much needed life to that part of the city, which used to be completely run down and vacant. it was neat seeing franklin towers from that perspective too, in the parking lot, because it looks like its 25 stories tall, and the city looks great at night in the background.
 
Scrap yard asks judge to reconsider ruling for city
By Kate Bucklin (published: February 22, 2007)
PORTLAND ? Embattled E. Perry Iron & Metal Co. is asking a judge to amend a Feb. 6 ruling that the scrap yard must obey the city?s scrap-metal recycling regulations.

E. Perry sued the city last year, claiming rules passed in 2004 regulating scrap yards were developed to force the company out of the Bayside neighborhood.

In ruling against the business, Superior Court Justice Thomas Delahanty said E. Perry failed to prove the city created the scrap yard rules to force the company out of Bayside.

The motion to amend or alter the ruling was filed Feb. 13 by attorneys David Hirshon and Marshall Tinkle on the grounds that the judge ?overlooked the applicable statutory definition of solid waste facility ...? When interpreted correctly, the motion says, it is clear the city?s scrap metal recycling ordinance is barred by state statute.

The Legislature, according to the company, has assigned separate and distinct meanings to ?solid waste facility? and ?solid waste disposal facility.? Municipal ordinances stricter than the state?s are prohibited for solid waste facilities, but not for disposal facilities.

E. Perry is a solid waste facility not a disposal facility, according to the motion by Hirshon and Tinkle, because the Bayside recycler does not incinerate or landfill waste.

The city ordinance would force E. Perry to pay for testing and cleanup of contaminants, to annually submit a variety of documents related to facility operations, and provide specific fencing and noise control.

Hirshon said Tuesday he expects the city to respond to his motion within a 21-day filing deadline. Although the deadline for E. Perry to file an appeal was Feb. 21, the motion to amend allows a stay until Delahanty makes his decision on the motion and any subsequent responses from the city.

Meanwhile, the city has a public hearing scheduled for Monday to take comments on proposed changes to the Scrap Metal Recycling Facility rules. The changes include limiting the height of required fencing around scrap yards to 15 feet, although scrap piles may be taller.

That meeting is scheduled for 4 p.m. Monday in Room 209 at City Hall.

The city has also made a ?final offer? to encourage E. Perry to move out of Bayside by offering the company $1 million in federal relocation funding. The deadline for E. Perry to take the city up on the offer is March. 3.

The city?s ongoing effort to redevelop Bayside as a residential and commercial neighborhood has included attempts to relocate E. Perry and another scrap yard, New England Metal Recycling. A little more than a year ago the city made a deal with New England Metal Recycling to move the company to Riverside Street, on property the city purchased with help from the Trust for Public Land.

The city?s Public Works Department, also based in Bayside, is expected to move to the Riverside property, too.



Kate Bucklin can be reached at 781-3661 ext. 106 or kbucklin@theforecaster.net.
 
according to city of portland's downtown corporation website with current back up material (city of portlands website), the office/garage/student housing for marginal way got full planning board approval and should be completed in the next 18 months.
 
INTRODUCING THE NEW INTERMED BUILDING, CORNER OF MARGINAL WAY.

intermedbldgvb5.jpg
 
Patrick said:
INTRODUCING THE NEW INTERMED BUILDING, CORNER OF MARGINAL WAY.

intermedbldgvb5.jpg
Click to expand...
Love it! Love all the Glass Curtainwall (not all brick - hooray!) Finally a signature type building down in that area. To bad it wasn't about 6 floors higher.
 
here's a clearer image of it. It would benice if it was the max height for that area (125' I elieve, with a possibility to reach 165' is special extra-height-allowance criteria are met). This should begin construction this spring.

intermedbldg2.jpg


Also, here is the most up to date rendering of the student housing that is breaking ground at the same time, right next to the above office building:
baysidevillage2.jpg


here is the concept plan for across the street:
baysideconceptualzz8.jpg


and here is the parking garage that will be constructed first:
baysidegarage2.jpg


all this info available at: http://www.portlandmaine.gov/planning/baysidemajordev.asp


A redeveloping gateway into Portland, Bayside continues its energetic transformation from a vacant and underutilized 110-acre industrial tract into a first-rate, mixed-use urban district. Its location adjacent to Interstate 295 is enabling corporate headquarters, office buildings and retail operations to benefit from excellent visibility. Bayside will also afford a wide range of housing development options with immediate access to Portland?s vibrant downtown.

Two building projects in Bayside were recently completed. Sixty-three Marginal Way is a 28,000 square foot office building with 6,000 square feet of retail space at the street level. The building site is across Marginal Way from the headquarters for AAA of Northern New England which was the first new office building in Bayside, completed in 2003. On Somerset Street and the Franklin Arterial, Whole Foods is building a 47,000 square foot grocery store that will provide at least 200 jobs. The project is scheduled for completion in the winter of 2007.

Construction begin in the spring of 2007 on a 72,000 square foot office building with close to 10,000 square feet of retail space and structured parking for 430 cars. This Bayside location is on the corner of Preble Street and Marginal Way, adjacent to Interstate 295. Just down the street from this project will be a 400-bed (100 unit) student housing development. Just across Marginal Way from these two projects is six acres of city-owned land, slated for development. The site is currently being marketed by the City, with plans to construct a parking garage on a portion of the property and sell the remainder for private development. Interested parties are encouraged to contact the City?s Economic Development Division or Drew Sigfridson and Tony McDonald with CBRE/The Boulos Company.
 
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:

A Portland Community Forges a New Identity

AFTER Heidi and William Wood moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Unity Village last fall, they baked cookies and knocked on the doors of every neighbor in the 33-unit development.

They encountered young professionals like themselves who had looked for a well-managed building and reasonable market-rate rents in one of New England?s hot small cities. But they also met Somali immigrants, single mothers and adults so down on their luck they had just moved out of the shelter up the street.

The couple, who are college graduates, and their neighbors reflect the economic, cultural and racial diversity that distinguishes not only Unity Village, which opened six years ago, but also the Bayside neighborhood, which is one of Portland?s oldest, is still its poorest and is becoming its most unusual.

The neighborhood, which sits on a bluff behind City Hall and overlooks Back Cove and Interstate 295, is stirring again after decades of neglect that turned it from a prosperous 19th- and early-20th-century area of middle-class merchants to a place where city workers parked during the day and society?s forgotten dwelled in the evening?s shadows.

Now it is possible on the same Bayside block to eat a $100 meal at one of the city?s fine seafood restaurants or get one free at a soup kitchen that feeds 500 people daily. Residents here sleep in historic 19th-century homes, some worth $300,000 or more ? still a relative bargain in a city where houses with water views can easily cost $600,000 or more ? while transients can get a free bed at overnight shelters, one for men and the other for women.

On Bayside?s south end are worn convenience stores with metal grates on the windows selling cigarettes and beer. On the north end is a new 47,000-square-foot Whole Foods Market.

To some longtime residents, the neighborhood?s transformation over the last decade has been anticipated, but it is nevertheless striking.

?This was the horrendously ugly part of town,? said Ron Spinella, an artist and gallery owner who is chairman of the Bayside Neighborhood Association and has lived in the community since 1996.

?The scrap yards are here,? he said. ?Buildings weren?t being used. Houses were empty. But we also had more vacant and unused property than any neighborhood, in a city that was revitalizing very fast. So you just knew that the city?s deteriorated back door could become its handsome front door.?

The Bayside neighborhood is not at that point yet, but it appears to be on the way.

The question facing developers and the city, which adopted a Bayside redevelopment plan in 1999, was this: Would people with means, particularly college-educated professionals just getting started, be willing to settle in a neighborhood known for its soup kitchen, shelters and transients?

Unity Village, which cost $5.25 million and opened in 2001, seems to have answered that question, city officials and residents say. In their view, it has served as an economic catalyst that has helped stabilize the neighborhood by providing shelter and a sense of community for those with rising fortunes, like the Woods, and those less fortunate. By offering affordable apartments in attractive town-house-style buildings just blocks from City Hall and the arts, central business and entertainment districts of the city, it has coaxed people of different incomes, backgrounds and races to live side by side.

?A lot of people didn?t think it could happen,? said Alex Jaegerman, the director of Portland?s planning department. ?Piece by piece, it?s happening.?

Mr. and Mrs. Wood, who arrived at Unity Village last September after she completed a graduate degree in social work from Smith College in Northampton Mass., said they were more than satisfied with their new home.

?We specifically chose Bayside,? said Mrs. Wood, 31, who just landed a job as a clinical social worker with the Providence Service Corporation in Brunswick. Mr. Wood is a regional coordinator in New England for the Bahai faith.

?We were looking for a city that was close to the ocean, and a neighborhood that was as diverse as possible,? Mrs. Wood said. They pay $850 a month for their two-bedroom apartment.

Jennifer Guptill, a 32-year-old property manager and single mother, has lived in Unity Village since October 2005 with her four children in a three-bedroom market-rate apartment that rents for $1,000 a month. That is hundreds of dollars a month less than similar apartments in the tonier neighborhoods to the north and west that overlook Casco Bay and the Atlantic.
Skip to next paragraph
Herb Swanson for The New York Times

The developer Richard Berman received an award for its novel layout and design.
Enlarge This Image
Herb Swanson for The New York Times

A new Whole Foods Market has sprung up near an old scrap yard.

?Outside of the fact that the homeless shelter is around the corner, it seems like they are making Bayside better,? Ms. Guptill said. ?My vision is to stay here as long as I need, as long as it is safe and it continues to get cleaned up. The neighborhood?s improving.?

The neighborhood?s population is slowly growing. A century ago, Bayside was a densely packed community of stout homes that sheltered perhaps 5,000 residents. Urban renewal, though, scraped away many of the homes, replacing them with parking lots. Other houses were abandoned. The homeless shelters were established in the 1970s. The population dropped below 1,000.

Then in the 1990s, Portland, which now has 64,000 residents, the same number as it did in 1990, joined other New England cities in experiencing an economic and cultural revival. Upwardly mobile young professionals resettled the city?s seaside neighborhoods. Artists colonized lofts and old homes in other neighborhoods.

Bayside, with its ample open spaces and old homes ready to be rehabilitated, was seen by city planners as a place of metropolitan opportunity. With the help of Bayside residents, the city developed its plan to turn Bayside into Portland?s ?urban gateway.? The neighborhood?s population is now about 1,400.

To accompany the increase in residents, Bayside is seeing a rise in construction. A 37-unit loft-style condominium is being built on Chestnut Street. Apartments will be priced from just under $200,000 to $400,000, numbers competitive in Portland?s market, which has cooled in recent months.

Avesta Housing, a nonprofit developer of affordable housing based in Portland, will open a 60-unit apartment building later this year on the corner of Pearl and Oxford Streets. Rents will be $700 for a one-bedroom, $840 for a two-bedroom and $950 for a three-bedroom, including utilities. Work on a 105,000-square-foot medical office building is scheduled to get under way in the spring.

Unity Village, the first project completed under the gateway plan, was developed by Jim Hatch, a nonprofit housing consultant, and Richard Berman, the principal of Berman Associates, a local builder.

Both men responded to the city?s request to build on three city-owned lots that make up the Unity Village site. Winton Scott Architects designed the four three-story buildings. One-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments are on the ground floor, with three-bedroom units above. Each apartment has a front door and a stoop that faces the street. Because the project is in the central city, the designers minimized the number of parking spaces and maximized the development?s density.

Seven apartments are reserved for families and couples capable of paying market rents. Seven other apartments are reserved as transitional homes for people moving out of shelters. The remaining 19 units are subsidized housing for single men and women and working families, many of them with young children and teenagers who are often found in Unity Village?s community room during the winter, or on the Oxford Street playground when it?s warm.

Unity Village has attracted national notice among public housing agencies for its novel layout and design.

In 2005, the federal Environmental Protection Agency awarded Berman Associates the Environmental Merit Award for significant contributions to environmental awareness and problem solving.

?These projects take stamina, patience and creativity,? the award citation said.

As part of the area?s transformation, industrial sites and junkyards are being removed.
 
So the USM lot deal has finally closed, selling for one million, and there is an "entity" interested in the city's remaining bayside land, according to the downtown portland corporation website.
 
Do you mean a package like the city wanted? Where somebody would buy out all that land and have a plan like they proposed? That would be sweet. That one Intermed building is really going to change the look and height of downtown. It will really change the depth in the eye of someone driving by.
 
All the website said was Jack Lufkin told the downtown Portland corporation that he had spoken with an entity interested in the city's land in bayside, and that he would discuss this more in depth and elaborate on this in the executive session being held behind closed doors tomorrow at City Hall. Lufkin has stepped down to be part of Gorham Savings bank (the same company who just built an office building on marginal way because of his help...I wonder how he got his job???).

That green gorham savings bank light up sign does make that area look a lot better at night, I agree. Driving south on forest ave you can see franklin towers through the AAA and gorham savings bank buildings, which looks cool. Witht he intermed building, that area will look a lot more urban.
 
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