Paper overing the problem and its cause
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Portland [Maine] Commercial Property Owners Will Soon Face Fines for Vacant Storefronts Unless They Allow the City to Display Art
The Portland City Council has voted to penalize commercial property owners if storefronts are vacant for over six months unless they agree to allow the City to bring in temporary art installations.
Fines for empty storefronts will range from $500 to more than $7,500, depending upon how long the space has gone without housing a business.
The $250 fine would be levied for commercial spaces left vacant between six months and a year, while spaces empty for ten years would be hits with a $7,500 fine. Every year beyond that would increase the fine by $1,000.
Property owners may, however, obtain a waiver allowing them to leave their properties vacant for an extended period of time without being assessed a fine.
In order to obtain one of these waivers, a commercial property owner must agree to allow the City to set up a temporary art installation in any visible area of the vacant space, including in the exterior windows.
Waivers may also be granted by the City if there are extenuating circumstances preventing a space from being occupied for an extended period of time.
To enforce these new requirements, commercial property owners must register vacant spaces with Portland’s Housing and Economic Development Department within thirty days.
This registry of vacant commercial properties will be made publicly available on the City’s website and will be updated at least once every three months.
Included in this registry will be information about the approved use of each vacant space, as well as the layout, reason for the vacancy, desired rent amount, and the owner’s contact information.
[“Desired rent amount” — I guarantee you that the next move by the communists controlling the City Council will be to extend the current residential rent control ordinance to commercial properties —ed]
According to WMTW, Portland City Councilor Kate Sykes views the proposal as a “win-win” because the City is either able to “charge to not basically make the storefront look like it’s empty; otherwise, you get free artwork.”
“The goal here is to make it a livable and vibrant place, not to hurt or bring down or burden any business in any way or any property owner,” Portland City Councilor Sarah Michniewicz said, according to Fox 23 Maine.
But here’s the (due to be wallpapered) elephant in the room:
This opinion, however, is not shared by everyone in Portland, as some have suggested that vacancies occur due to safety concerns.
“You can have Picassos in that window, and it will not change the tenor of the problems on that intersection,” said resident George Rowe.
Although Portland Mayor Mark Dion said that he believes the new program will help to improve safety [he doesn’t say how — ed] he still voted against the proposal in light of the experiences shared by business owners in the City.
“I have to stand up for the idea that the commercial brokers try to tell you something about their experience in that market,” said Mayor Dion.
“If we refurbish a storefront and someone is passed out on the sidewalk with a needle in their arm, I don’t know what we have accomplished,” Dion said. “You could have the best Picasso in the window, and it’s not going to deter that kind of conduct.”
“I don’t know a commercial real estate owner that doesn’t want their space filled,” Portland resident Bev Uhlenhake said. “They’re not not filling their spaces because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t, and we need to fix the problem.”
I wrote about this issue back in April
Why do our compassionate liberal friends ruin every city they occupy?
Not very long ago, Portland Maine was a clean, safe little city of 60,000 souls, with beautiful parks, a vibrant commercial waterfront and some great restaurants. All that beauty attracted young people and middle-aged yuppies from Boston, and they promptly set about remaking the city into their image of a liberal/socialist paradise. They succeeded only partly: liberal/socialist, yes; paradise, no.
Here’s the latest dispatch from the battlefield:
Portland’s Monument Square in Crisis: Business Owners, Residents Demand City Action on Homelessness and Rampant Drug Use
Portland residents and business owners are speaking out and asking the City Council for help to address what they say are unsafe and obstructive conditions in Monument Square caused by the presence of homeless people and drug users.
A letter to Portland Mayor Mark Dion from David Turin, the owner of David’s Restaurant [one of the best, and priciest restaurants in Portland — Ed] in Monument Square, was read during the public comment portion at the City Council’s Monday meeting.
“Monument Square has become an unsafe place to work or visit, and has become a hostile and expensive environment in which to operate a restaurant,” Turin wrote.
Turin … wrote that his employees have had their cars broken into six times in the last month, and have seen over a hundred instances both of littering and open drug use in front of his restaurant.
“Dining guests and staff are frequently abused and sometimes threatened,” Turin wrote. “We have had our front windows smashed twice in two years.”
“The square has long been a desirable destination for strolling, sitting outside, shopping, doing business and dining — now it looks like an encampment of some kind,” he wrote.
Turin said that the homelessness issue in the square is an “existential crisis and threat” to his business and other businesses in the area. “Please help us,” he ends his letter.
Ari Gerson, owner of Longfellow Books near Monument Square, also spoke on the issue of homelessness and public safety in the area during the Monday City Council meeting.
“Over the past year, we’ve seen a sharp increase in drug use, aggressive panhandling, and confrontational behavior right outside our front doors,” Gerson told the Council.
“We’ve found needles and drug paraphernalia in the planters and the sidewalk cracks,” Gerson said. “There are people passed out, clearly in distress, and sometimes frightening episodes of shouting or violence that scares off customers, staff and even myself at times.”
Several Monument Square neighborhood residents also spoke at the meeting and voiced similar concerns to the business owners.
“I have become frightened in my own neighborhood to go outside my own door, and to face the things that we are facing at this point,” one female resident said.
“Almost everyday when I leave my house I have to knock on my door, because someone is using in front of my door,” another woman said. “I’ve come home often to defecation or urine on the ground outside of my house.”
“When you call the police, they come, but it’s hard to offer any help,” she said.
“When I go home, or try to leave, and I have to wake somebody up or move them to get in or out of my front door, that’s not very comfortable,” another woman said.
Several of the speakers called for increased police presence and intervention in the Monument Square area, as well as for the city to direct more resources into shelters and support services for the homeless.
So the City Council’s response to these complaints and cries of alarm from the citizens who keep the city going? “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!”