The Casco | 201 Federal Street | Portland

DanielPWM19 said:
Wow ... Portland has been really good at ripping stuff down, but not building anything.

I really wish some of the buildings in Monument Square torn down for One City Center were kept.

I hate the big fat bottom of One City Center and would rather have had a taller, more attractive building facing Temple Street. The older buildings could have been saved behind it and proceed with eliminating the street for a pedestrian walking space as it is now. (Helena Montana has a street similar to this). Or two buildings TALLER could have been built in that huge footprint.

I feel like downtown has an abundance of parking garages. Though it will be argued it's still not enough for commuters, it drives me crazy why Maine didn't invest in public transportation, rail, etc instead.
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Curious what street in Helena you are referring to .... I know Helena like the back of my hand and that poor town too was ravaged by urban renewal to create the Last Chance Gulch pedestrian mall.
 
PlantArch said:
Curious what street in Helena you are referring to .... I know Helena like the back of my hand and that poor town too was ravaged by urban renewal to create the Last Chance Gulch pedestrian mall.
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Last Chance Gulch. Essentially just a small street closed to vehicle traffic.

St. Augustine has something similar (St. George Street) and that area that's closed to traffic too.
 
DanielPWM19 said:
Last Chance Gulch. Essentially just a small street closed to vehicle traffic.

St. Augustine has something similar (St. George Street) and that area that's closed to traffic too.
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The creation of that pedestrian mall is still controversial among Helenans. A lot of historic Victorian architecture was razed to create the mall during urban renewal and it never became greatly successful as they had hoped.
 
DanielPWM19 said:
I feel like downtown has an abundance of parking garages. Though it will be argued it's still not enough for commuters, it drives me crazy why Maine didn't invest in public transportation, rail, etc instead.
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Maine's land use patterns, town structure, etc., were decentralized by design. Go back to the series Colin Woodard wrote for the Press Herald for Maine's Bicentennial 2 years ago for more info, but essentially Fernando Gorges wanted to recreate the pastoral scattered villages of Devon in England. Maine had some of the earliest settlements in New England, and that pattern survived even after the Puritans came up from Boston with guns and forcibly colonized us; witness the lack of town commons that are everywhere in NH and Mass. Jump to today, and that history makes transit very expensive due to low average density.

So why isn't there an effort to undo some of that density? Because even today, Maine's population is dominated by rural areas; I broke down the 2020 Census results and found that the rough median was around the town of Fairfield, meaning that half the state's population lives in towns of 6500 people or less, and half lives in the 47 or 48 towns that are larger. Just 34.4% of the people live in towns of 10,000 or larger. And the people who live in those areas do so because they like things that way, so no reason to change to make things more crowded and worse.
 
markhb said:
Maine's land use patterns, town structure, etc., were decentralized by design. Go back to the series Colin Woodard wrote for the Press Herald for Maine's Bicentennial 2 years ago for more info, but essentially Fernando Gorges wanted to recreate the pastoral scattered villages of Devon in England. Maine had some of the earliest settlements in New England, and that pattern survived even after the Puritans came up from Boston with guns and forcibly colonized us; witness the lack of town commons that are everywhere in NH and Mass. Jump to today, and that history makes transit very expensive due to low average density.

So why isn't there an effort to undo some of that density? Because even today, Maine's population is dominated by rural areas; I broke down the 2020 Census results and found that the rough median was around the town of Fairfield, meaning that half the state's population lives in towns of 6500 people or less, and half lives in the 47 or 48 towns that are larger. Just 34.4% of the people live in towns of 10,000 or larger. And the people who live in those areas do so because they like things that way, so no reason to change to make things more crowded and worse.
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Are you asking why create more density around/within Portland?

Because rural and suburban sprawl destroys fragile ecosystems, habitats, leads to misguided "wildlife creep", and has a larger impact on global warming/carbon footprints. Building UP is always better than building OUT.

Maine also has an appetite for making Portland a LITTLE bit larger with more sustainable jobs rather than service-industry jobs that can often be volatile with economic headwinds. Better jobs will also mean more EQUITABLE wages for Mainers, who are severely underpaid. Maine also has an "age" problem. We have one of the oldest populations in the country with the majority of our youth leaving the state and never coming back. Creating opportunities here is what will keep talent, creativity, and families HERE.

Lastly, there is a massive housing shortage within Cumberland County, but not exclusively. We already know that suburban/rural sprawl is bad for the environment. These communities also don't have the infrastructure to sustain, support, or even consider the possibilities of adding housing. Infrastructure is not just water, sewer, electricity, roads - but teachers, police, EMS, fire, health care workers, and so on. Keeping the greater Portland area small only serves to keep it more exclusive, unaffordable, out of reach, and honestly less diverse. Communities thrive when they're diverse. Portland's renaissance is deeply owed to those who helped put it back on the map and made it interesting. And now those very people can't even afford to live here. Or even if they could, there's no housing for them anyway. Additional housing stock at least levels the playing field making the rental market more competitive. Currently landlords are charging more money simply because they CAN, not because they need to. Add the fact that we've had crap ordinances around Air BNB's sucking up housing.

So why make it more dense? Because it's better for everyone overall.

Want "pastoral"? Drive down Stroudwater toward Westbrook and see the cows along the last remaining farm lands. These farm lands can remain untouched if we capitalize on urban in-fill and having VISION. Something Portland has lacked for a long time (hence all the discussion about historic buildings). Redfern has done a great job with in-fill within the city. Portland has plenty of barren (yet somehow precious?) parking lots that have sat vacant for up to 50 years. That in itself is just WASTE. So let's add some housing, rather than let the rich white part-time Maine resident NIMBY's keep the area exclusive and unattainable. Let's add some culture, vibrancy, fresh blood, and sustainable jobs.
 
Well argued. Usually, futurists when they play with their utopia drawings have urban areas concentrated and tall with plush sprawling greenery surrounding. Taller is better. New York is not a useful comparison to what tall buildings do to a city. It's massive all-around. I was in Vancouver, B.C. for a bit and it has many tall residential buildings and less of the giant office towers that empty out at night. It's seemingly always busy all over, though I haven't been there post Covid so I don't know the present scene. It is also somewhat absent of the typical wide bisecting freeway structure that nearly all U.S. cities have.
 
TC_zoid said:
Well argued. Usually, futurists when they play with their utopia drawings have urban areas concentrated and tall with plush sprawling greenery surrounding. Taller is better. New York is not a useful comparison to what tall buildings do to a city. It's massive all-around. I was in Vancouver, B.C. for a bit and it has many tall residential buildings and less of the giant office towers that empty out at night. It's seemingly always busy all over, though I haven't been there post Covid so I don't know the present scene. It is also somewhat absent of the typical wide bisecting freeway structure that nearly all U.S. cities have.
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I realize I can be quite vociferous, but I'm passionate about Portland and its growth. Saddened by it's mistakes, but hopeful for great things to come.
 
markhb said:
Maine's land use patterns, town structure, etc., were decentralized by design. Go back to the series Colin Woodard wrote for the Press Herald for Maine's Bicentennial 2 years ago for more info, but essentially Fernando Gorges wanted to recreate the pastoral scattered villages of Devon in England. Maine had some of the earliest settlements in New England, and that pattern survived even after the Puritans came up from Boston with guns and forcibly colonized us; witness the lack of town commons that are everywhere in NH and Mass. Jump to today, and that history makes transit very expensive due to low average density.

So why isn't there an effort to undo some of that density? Because even today, Maine's population is dominated by rural areas; I broke down the 2020 Census results and found that the rough median was around the town of Fairfield, meaning that half the state's population lives in towns of 6500 people or less, and half lives in the 47 or 48 towns that are larger. Just 34.4% of the people live in towns of 10,000 or larger. And the people who live in those areas do so because they like things that way, so no reason to change to make things more crowded and worse.
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One look at the Historic Portland thread and anyone can see that Portland was founded with density and a diversity of land uses and job types all intermingled – and if you look at historic photos of most Maine towns, most of them had dense cores of housing, jobs and recreation intermingled too just at different scales. The post-war automobile age with its fully subsidized interstates, highways and arterials, along with standardized road-design mandates, fostered exponential expansion (sprawl) but that created a wholly auto-dependent culture that has proven unsustainable. We can keep growing and rely less on consuming raw land and resources by building back in and around those original cores and by building differently, with more density in inner-ring suburbs. And that's been a trend now for almost two decades so transit in and around Portland and Maine's bigger 'cities' and towns starts to make more sense again too.
 
DanielPWM19 said:
Are you asking why create more density around/within Portland?

Because rural and suburban sprawl destroys fragile ecosystems, habitats, leads to misguided "wildlife creep", and has a larger impact on global warming/carbon footprints. Building UP is always better than building OUT.

Maine also has an appetite for making Portland a LITTLE bit larger with more sustainable jobs rather than service-industry jobs that can often be volatile with economic headwinds. Better jobs will also mean more EQUITABLE wages for Mainers, who are severely underpaid. Maine also has an "age" problem. We have one of the oldest populations in the country with the majority of our youth leaving the state and never coming back. Creating opportunities here is what will keep talent, creativity, and families HERE.

Lastly, there is a massive housing shortage within Cumberland County, but not exclusively. We already know that suburban/rural sprawl is bad for the environment. These communities also don't have the infrastructure to sustain, support, or even consider the possibilities of adding housing. Infrastructure is not just water, sewer, electricity, roads - but teachers, police, EMS, fire, health care workers, and so on. Keeping the greater Portland area small only serves to keep it more exclusive, unaffordable, out of reach, and honestly less diverse. Communities thrive when they're diverse. Portland's renaissance is deeply owed to those who helped put it back on the map and made it interesting. And now those very people can't even afford to live here. Or even if they could, there's no housing for them anyway. Additional housing stock at least levels the playing field making the rental market more competitive. Currently landlords are charging more money simply because they CAN, not because they need to. Add the fact that we've had crap ordinances around Air BNB's sucking up housing.

So why make it more dense? Because it's better for everyone overall.

Want "pastoral"? Drive down Stroudwater toward Westbrook and see the cows along the last remaining farm lands. These farm lands can remain untouched if we capitalize on urban in-fill and having VISION. Something Portland has lacked for a long time (hence all the discussion about historic buildings). Redfern has done a great job with in-fill within the city. Portland has plenty of barren (yet somehow precious?) parking lots that have sat vacant for up to 50 years. That in itself is just WASTE. So let's add some housing, rather than let the rich white part-time Maine resident NIMBY's keep the area exclusive and unattainable. Let's add some culture, vibrancy, fresh blood, and sustainable jobs.
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Having VISION is something the city of Portland can NEVER be accused of. They see only that which is right in front of their nose.
 
IMG_4181 2.jpeg
!
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Pretty darn close to the original rendering! I hope the brick extensions above the left grouping of window bays is still part of the design plan.
 
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DanielPWM19 said:
Are you asking why create more density around/within Portland?

Because rural and suburban sprawl destroys fragile ecosystems, habitats, leads to misguided "wildlife creep", and has a larger impact on global warming/carbon footprints. Building UP is always better than building OUT.

Maine also has an appetite for making Portland a LITTLE bit larger with more sustainable jobs rather than service-industry jobs that can often be volatile with economic headwinds. Better jobs will also mean more EQUITABLE wages for Mainers, who are severely underpaid. Maine also has an "age" problem. We have one of the oldest populations in the country with the majority of our youth leaving the state and never coming back. Creating opportunities here is what will keep talent, creativity, and families HERE.

Lastly, there is a massive housing shortage within Cumberland County, but not exclusively. We already know that suburban/rural sprawl is bad for the environment. These communities also don't have the infrastructure to sustain, support, or even consider the possibilities of adding housing. Infrastructure is not just water, sewer, electricity, roads - but teachers, police, EMS, fire, health care workers, and so on. Keeping the greater Portland area small only serves to keep it more exclusive, unaffordable, out of reach, and honestly less diverse. Communities thrive when they're diverse. Portland's renaissance is deeply owed to those who helped put it back on the map and made it interesting. And now those very people can't even afford to live here. Or even if they could, there's no housing for them anyway. Additional housing stock at least levels the playing field making the rental market more competitive. Currently landlords are charging more money simply because they CAN, not because they need to. Add the fact that we've had crap ordinances around Air BNB's sucking up housing.

So why make it more dense? Because it's better for everyone overall.

Want "pastoral"? Drive down Stroudwater toward Westbrook and see the cows along the last remaining farm lands. These farm lands can remain untouched if we capitalize on urban in-fill and having VISION. Something Portland has lacked for a long time (hence all the discussion about historic buildings). Redfern has done a great job with in-fill within the city. Portland has plenty of barren (yet somehow precious?) parking lots that have sat vacant for up to 50 years. That in itself is just WASTE. So let's add some housing, rather than let the rich white part-time Maine resident NIMBY's keep the area exclusive and unattainable. Let's add some culture, vibrancy, fresh blood, and sustainable jobs.
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I was with you until the needless racial prejudice at the end, I mean being white or otherwise is not something one can change not a fault of character. Perhaps it's something about modern american culture I have to get used to, I was not born here but it seems to me that the way to de-power racial prejudice is not to use it as a weapon to defeat itself.
 
mahonco said:
I was with you until the needless racial prejudice at the end, I mean being white or otherwise is not something one can change not a fault of character. Perhaps it's something about modern american culture I have to get used to, I was not born here but it seems to me that the way to de-power racial prejudice is not to use it as a weapon to defeat itself.
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Redlining (and the lingering effects today and the practices still happening under the table today) are how we got here in america in the first place. Environmental justice is obsolutely a race issue here, but yes i'll peg that on you not being from here
 
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