'The city seems to be drifting'
by Edward D. Murphy
Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram
November 22, 2005

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Larsen, a city resident for all of his 76 years, said that in decades past, business leaders such as Joseph "Chet" Jordan, George I. Lewis, Robert R. Masterton, Scott F. Hutchinson and Mary Rines Thompson did double duty as civic leaders.

When a project needed a financial boost, they opened their checkbooks. When City Hall needed a business perspective, they offered their expertise. And when various interest groups were at odds, they stepped in to help find a compromise.

Larsen remembers their deeds, but to those a bit younger, the names are little more than letters on plaques or mere words recited without explanation when scholarships are handed out at high school graduation ceremonies each June.

Larsen said he doesn't see many people qualified or willing to take those former leaders' places, and he worries about what that means for Portland.

"I don't know about the future," he said. "The city seems to be drifting."

Others share Larsen's sense that the city lacks direction. The concern is that a lack of people willing to step up and fill leadership roles will stunt Portland's attempts to grow and limit its ability to evolve in the years ahead.

It's a worry to Portland's residents and business owners, of course, but that understates what's at stake.

Portland's fate will, in large part, determine how its suburbs fare. And the Portland area is an economic engine for Maine, despite years of attempts by politicians and the state government to steer development north to revitalize central and northern Maine's struggling economies.

For people like Owen Wells, the lack of leadership in Portland has driven him to look outside the state's largest city for opportunities to help spark economic development. That's a telling indictment because Wells, with late philanthropist Elizabeth Noyce, helped revitalize Portland more than a decade ago.

The city was hard-hit by the recession of the early 1990s. Vacancy rates in office buildings were high — one office tower was almost completely empty.

Congress Street, once the state's premier retailing corridor, was dotted with empty storefronts.

Noyce to the rescue

Portland seemed in danger of slipping into a dark economic hole when Noyce bought three office towers, parking lots and nearby property, built the Portland Public Market and persuaded L.L. Bean to open a store on Congress Street. She fixed up the buildings, cut rents and found tenants, bringing money back to downtown Portland.

Today, the Libra Foundation, funded by Noyce's estate, has sold off many of its holdings in Portland and is more focused on other projects, including developing a top-flight office park in New Gloucester, well away from downtown.

Wells, who heads the foundation, said he's frustrated by the lack of leaders with a sense of where the city should go.

Portland has become Balkanized, Wells believes, with neighborhood groups holding sway over their own territory and no one willing to look at the bigger picture.

"Somebody has to look at the city as a whole, not isolated pockets," he said. While neighborhood involvement is necessary, "democracy also has to look at what's good for all the people."

Wells said he doesn't see the city's situation as dire, noting that a number of projects are planned or underway, including the Ocean Gateway project and a number of high-end condominiums and hotels.

But he said there are daunting complexities involved in navigating the city's economic development, planning and zoning processes, plus the need to court neighborhood groups. It requires business leaders to invest a lot of time and money in a project with no assurance they will ever get an answer, let alone approval.

Portland could be growing faster without those kinds of roadblocks, he said.

"Everything that I see, and certain people that I talk with have indicated to me that they think the city is a hindrance to a lot of development," Wells said.

Orlando Delogue, a law professor who has served as both a city councilor and planning board member, said the lack of leadership leads to a process that tends to bog down.

"We spend a lot of time in Portland now shifting from our left foot to our right foot, waiting for someone to make a decision," he said.

Sticking their necks out

A decade or two ago, city leaders were more willing to stick their necks out, Delogue said.

"We had some people back then who said, 'Well, this makes sense and that makes sense,' and then we got on with that," he said. Now, "no one can grab the bull by the horns and go forward."

Delogue mentioned former City Manager Robert Ganley, in particular, as one who had a sense of where he wanted to see the city go. Ganley had to defer to the council's final say, Delogue said, but he pushed the elected officials to make a decision, even if it differed from what he wanted.

"What they had a habit of doing was having ideas of their own, putting them in the mix and listening to the range of opinion and then making a decision and moving forward. Sometimes when you make a decision and move forward, it's wrong," he said, but "they got off the dime and did something. I don't see that happening today."

We're not elected. The people who are elected have a responsibility and a role, but we have a role: to get into that dialogue."

But others suggest that the process, while slower, is now more inclusive than it was in the 1960s and 1970s.

"Now, it's a lot messier," joked Ron Spinella, who heads the Bayside Neighborhood Association.

Neighborhood groups "are a pretty effective part of the leadership of communities, and they're here to stay," Spinella said. "We're not elected. The people who are elected have a responsibility and a role, but we have a role: to get into that dialogue."

Spinella said those who view neighborhood groups as reactive — existing only to oppose something — are wrong. He also said neighborhood leaders have a view that extends beyond their backyards.

"I'm the first to admit, I'm very parochial, very provincial," he said, but "the fact of the matter is that I'm a Portlander, too, and sometimes you need to be more of a Portlander than a Baysider."

But many developers and other business owners don't see it that way.

Portland has a reputation of being "not as aggressive" in courting new businesses as other areas of the state, said Joseph Wischerath, who was the executive vice president of Maine & Company, which recruits businesses to the state. Wischerath recently resigned to take a similar job in North Carolina.

Wischerath said cities such as Lewiston and Auburn are known for aggressively seeking out new businesses and streamlining the approval process. But Portland is known to be much more selective in the type of development it will permit, he said.

"Often, you see anti-development efforts come to the forefront now and then," he said.

But that's an example of the consensus-building approach that has become the way business gets done in Portland, City Manager Joseph Gray said.

Gray agreed there was a small group of leaders who helped move the city forward several decades ago, but he also noted that urban renewal efforts at the time were aimed at creating stronger neighborhoods. Many of Portland's strong local groups emerged from that effort, he said.

"I know it's frustrating for the business community," he said of Portland's neighborhood input, but "this is a consensus-building community. It's a process and over time, I think it has worked. There are bumps along the way, but in terms of the community and the style and the approach the city takes on development and redevelopment issues, in the long run, it's made for a very good community."

Leadership transformation

Angus King, Maine's former independent governor who now teaches a course on leadership at Bowdoin College, said Portland may be going through a leadership transformation.

The leaders in Portland in the '20s were the Baxters and folks like that who weren't really businesspeople"

It may seem as if all the leaders are gone, but it could be that new leadership is emerging relatively unnoticed, he said.

King also noted that in the early part of the 20th century, leadership was family-based.

"The leaders in Portland in the '20s were the Baxters and folks like that who weren't really businesspeople," he said, and the class of leadership that was dominated by businesspeople didn't really emerge until the 1950s and '60s.

In recent years, Portland and Maine in general have seen an exodus of locally based businesses.

Local banks have been bought up by huge multi-state banks as that industry has consolidated. Companies such as Unum and Hannaford Bros. have been swallowed up by mergers that took the top executive offices elsewhere.

"That's the way the world is going," King said. "We may not like it, but that's a fact. The centralization of business ownership and the resultant loss of indigenous corporate leadership is a net loss, that's definitely true."

King said leadership will soon emerge because a community can't thrive without it.

"It's always in transition, where people are passing on—retiring, dying, moving — and others are coming in," King said. "Times change, but the necessity and importance of leadership is a constant."

Staff Writer Edward D. Murphy can be contacted at 791-6465 or at: emurphy@pressherald.com