A few years ago, the American Planning Association highlighted Portland’s Commercial Street, which runs alongside the harbor from Merrill’s Marine Terminal in the west to the Old Port district in the east, as one of America’s “Great Streets.”. On the inland side of the street are a typically downtown mix of vegan bakeries and high-end tailor shops, offices and hotels: a vibrant and varied mix, but not all that much different from the rest of downtown Portland.

But on the other, waterfront side of Commercial Street there are fish processing facilities, chandleries, and lobster pounds, and a couple (relatively) inexpensive seafood dives. This is the city’s legendary “working waterfront,” where some of the city’s most valuable real estate — with downtown proximity and stunning harborfront views — has been set aside for low-rent marine industries like boat repair, fishing, and seafood processing.

Over the years, lots of developers have wanted to displace Portland’s lobster boats with condos and hotels, which, they promised, could have brought dozens of millionaires downtown and pumped new tax revenue into City Hall.

Instead, the city has repeatedly made it clear that new development that’s incompatible with marine industries is not welcome here. While policies have evolved over the years, the goals remain the same: to preserve affordable berths for working vessels, and affordable workspace and warehouses for the businesses that support them.

As a result, we don’t have gated communities on our harborfront. And contrary to the rueful promises of the slick tanning booth enthusiasts who tried to build luxury hotels and apartments on the water, our economy really hasn’t suffered for it.

Quite the contrary: because the waterfront is still a place where people can find hard work, and lobster boats, and great seafood fresh off the boat, the city as a whole is much richer. I was reminded of the working waterfront’s value once again last week, when the Chicago Tribune ran a travel piece about Portland that highlighted our “still-working waterfront where gulls squawk and circle overhead.” The article continues:

“It’s not so difficult to have that old charm when your town’s engine is what it was when founded in 1786: the docks. Portland’s long, salty docks still teem with stacks of lobster traps, the hulking ships that catch the nation’s seafood, and businesses boasting, ‘Fishing Maine waters for over 100 years.’ They’re open and free for your perusal and offer classic no-frills dining spots such as J’s Oyster, which serves fish straight out of the ocean and appears to have been redecorated approximately never during its 36-year existence.”

The working waterfront makes Portland unique: it makes our city worth visiting, and it enriches the lives of everyone who lives here. Here, in the heart of our city, is a place that attracts visitors and residents alike to engage with and appreciate the value of our oceans, and the people who work them. The working waterfront is a pure and authentic expression of our city’s hardworking, egalitarian spirit.

Photo: Hobson’s Wharf, by Flickr user Timothy Valentine.

Early last month I went to see local bands AWAAS, If and It, Glass Fingers, and the Sunset Hearts play at 131 Washington Avenue, an abandoned print shop at the base of Munjoy Hill. It’s not the kind of place that you’ll see on Chamber of Commerce brochures, but it’s cheap, and the venue’s neighbors — the windowless Sahara Club, a state parole office, and an overgrown hillside empty lot — don’t complain if the music’s too loud.

In other words, it’s an ideal place for creative people to cut loose. The venue’s founding tenants are setting out to “provide an affordable and accessible creative space in Portland,” with rents for the smaller studios starting at $100 a month (see the Craigslist listing here). To meet that goal, they’ve been hosting a bunch of fundraiser shows in the unfinished space, and they also managed a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise $5,000 for renovation materials. That campaign, now closed, actually raised $5,772 — potentially enough to replace the outdoor porta-john with some real first-world indoor plumbing.

Thanks to 95 Kickstarter backers, a lot of DIY sweat-equity, and even more to the numerous local bands who sacrificed their shares of door revenues at the venue’s first shows, 131 Washington is ready to cultivate a new generation of Portland artists and musicians.

Image: screenshot from the 131 Washington Kickstarter video.

“What harbor can receive you more securely than a great library?”

— Italo Calvino, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler

In the center of downtown Portland lies Monument Square, a memorial to the city’s Civil War veterans and a prominent public space where the city’s Arts District, business district, and the Old Port converge.

And occupying pride of place in the city’s most prominent square is the newly-renovated main branch of the Portland Public Library.

I’ve always believed that a city’s civic strength, egalitarianism, and confidence as a community are reflected in the quality of its libraries. Naturally, we have a great library here in Portland: the building’s geographic prominence reflects its importance as a cultural and educational resource for the entire southern Maine region.

Some of the things you’ll find there:

• The excellently curated Lewis Gallery — this month’s program includes a photography show sponsored by the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.
• Lunch-hour readings from local authors and evening film screenings in the Rines Auditorium.
• The Portland Room, home to the library’s special collections, including rare books, an archive of Maine’s newspapers and magazines, old maps, photographs, and other ephemera. The Portland Room also hosts an impressive collection from the famous Anthoensen Press and Thomas B. Mosher Press, which together established our city as an important center for printing and publishing in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
• An excellent children’s library, with daily programs and readings for young children, and the new Teen Library, which lends video games, hosts study sessions and game nights, and sports a generous collection of graphic novels and YA literature.
• And last but not least, a sun-filled reading room in the front of the building facing Congress Street and Monument Square — a great place to meet people, take advantage of the free wi-fi, read the local papers, or just watch the city pass by.

The Portland Public Library is currently soliciting donations for its annual fund, which purchases new materials above and beyond what would be possible with taxpayer contributions. Visit their secure webpages to give.

Photo courtesy of the Portland Public Library

The creative economy runs on coffee, and as you would expect, Portland, Maine, has a plethora of fine coffee and great coffeehouses. If you’re a creative thought worker trying to figure out where to park your laptop when inspiration strikes, the variety can be overwhelming. How do you choose the the right café for you? Contributor John Spritz has come up with a clever psychographic taxonomy based on movie stars for Portland’s java joints to help you find your spot:

Perhaps the current epicenter of Portland’s Coffee Universe is Bard, at the corner of Middle and Exchange streets. Here’s where budding entrepreneurs set up shop early in the morning, laptops open and buzzing, conducting business all day long. There are some obligatory sofas at Bard, but the crackle of commerce (or, at least, intense discussions) is in the air. If Bard were a movie actor, it’d be George Clooney.

For a more relaxed cup, mosey two short blocks to Arabica, at the head of Free Street. You’ll see a few more suits than you do at Bard, because of the nearby law firms, but even so Arabica is a bit more laid-back. It registers slightly higher on the goofiness scale. If Arabica were a movie actor, it’d be Jim Carrey.

Need to dial it back ever more? Meander up to Hilltop Coffee House, on Congress Street. The place to be if you want to run across Munjoy Hill pols or neighborhood technocrats, Hilltop is quiet, quiet, quiet, all except for the hiss of the espresso machine. Movie star? Morgan Freeman.

For many people, downtown Portland means Commercial Street, and the coffeehouse reigning there is Port Bean. It’s a good deal brighter than the other venues, with large plate glass walls and a menu that stretches beyond the bean and leaf to include Real Food. Not much coziness, but a pleasant spot from which to watch the tourist world stroll by. Movie star? Julia Roberts.

Smack dab in the middle of Monument Square is the aptly named Spartan Grill. Good coffee, but hard to linger there. Low on ambience, high on efficiency. Movie star: Tommy Lee Jones.

Coffee by Design is the mini-empire that really built Portland’s coffee culture. Three locations across town offer different levels of funk and squeezed-in pleasure. The Congress Street location is Cameron Diaz, India Street is Will Smith, Washington Avenue is Michael Keaton.

Of course, if you want to wander further afield, there’s Borealis—the one bread bakery of the bunch—on Ocean Avenue (Tom Hanks), Udder Place on Brighton Avenue (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Yordprom—which features a light Thai lunch menu—on Congress Street (Johnny Depp).

And then there are the tea emporia – but that’s another article…

Arabica Coffee, photo by John Spritz

It’s an old story—repeated from SoHo in New York in the 70s to SoMa in San Francisco in the 90s—the artists move in, the rents go up, the artists move on. But in the last 40 years, cities have learned that there are alternatives to this shell game that gentrifies the avant-garde. Live/work development has been used successfully in many cites as a way of enabling working artists to stay in the neighborhoods that they have helped to revitalize.

“Developing spaces that keep artists and creative people living and working in our downtown is essential to maintaining our city’s appealing character,” says Jennifer Hutchins, executive director of the Creative Portland Corporation and the Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance (PACA). “We know that a vibrant arts scene attracts commercial activity and helps keep our local economy strong.” To this end, Creative Portland has invited representatives from Artspace—a nonprofit based in Minneapolis, Minn. that specializes in the development of artist live/work spaces—for a two-day visit next week to help assess the conditions for such development in Portland. Artspace will meet with everyone from real estate developers, philanthropists and city officials, to community members, artists and cultural institutions to determine the needs and interest in this type of project, and to help frame the issues that would need to be resolved among these parties.

While in Portland, Artspace will also visit three potential development sites: the Portland Public Works garage at 55 Portland Street; the Masonic Temple at 8 Chestnut Street; and a block of properties at the corners of Hampshire Street and Federal Street in the India Street neighborhood. It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to see what turning one of these underutilized buildings into a live/work development could do both for local artists and for artists looking to relocate here from elsewhere.

A highlight of the Artspace visit will be a free public presentation, on Thursday, September 29, at 6:00 p.m. in the Rines Auditorium of the Portland Public Library. After a 30-45 minute interactive presentation about Artspace’s model for developing artist live/work space and examples of their projects throughout the country, the audience will be invited ask questions, provide feedback and contribute their views on community needs and interest in a live/work project in Portland.

Artspace has a national overview on creating affordable space for the artists and arts organizations, and they’ve been doing it for more than 30 years. Andy Graham, President of Creative Portland, says “I’m happy to have Artspace visit Portland because it gives us an opportunity to talk about what is missing in Portland, to imagine together what Portland needs to be even better.”

Photograph of blueprint mural on Free Street by Corey Tempelton, Portland, Maine

The summer’s other great sequel was not in 3-d multiplexes but right on Congress street in Portland. Ad Age named the VIA Agency, Small Agency of the Year, Gold. Why the Harry Potter motif? “The Via agency is housed in the Baxter building, built in 1888 as the public library of Portland, Maine. The imposing peaks and gables of the stone facade and wooden beam-studded high-ceiling interior led one Via client to dub the building the “Hogwarts of Advertising.” … And if the building is Hogwarts, then CEO and founder John Coleman is its Harry Potter. With similar rounded black-framed glasses, an affable charm and wide-eyed curiosity about everything, Mr. Coleman even seems to have Master Potter’s magic touch — in the advertising industry at least,” reads the lead of the Ad Age piece.

Careful readers of this blog will remember that VIA won silver for the same prive last year, no mean feat for a Portland agency. But the intervening year has been a very good one for VIA and they attribute at least a bit of that good fortune to being located here. ”To live in a smaller town and to go to baseball games and do the grocery shopping and all of that, helps in understanding the broad spectrum of different kinds of people, but I truly believe that what it really does is afford us the opportunity to think,” Mr. Coleman said. “I love New York, but I feel blessed to live in a place like Portland.”

Go to the Portland section of the Via website and the first thing you read is “Portland isn’t just where we are. It’s who we are.” (I wish we had written that!) They then lead you through three iPad swipes of highlights that tell you why it’s great to live in Portland followed by listings for eight (at last count) really great jobs. Talk about brand story! VIA is itself one of the best advertisements for Portland that Portland’s got. And for those of you who like a little wistful bitterness to temper your jubilation, read Chief Creative Officer Greg Smith’s reaction to the award, “So That Didn’t Suck.”

SPACE Gallery—or just “SPACE”—is a mainstay of the First Friday Art Walk circuit here in Portland, Maine. This downtown nonprofit arts organization also functions as a hub for the city’s most mind-blowing concerts. Shows this year included Dan Deacon, Titus Andronicus, and my favorite, The What Cheer! Brigade, a 19-piece marching band that played Balkanesque beats while snaking impishly through a dance-crazy audience. Throw in events like the four-day screening of Matthew Barney’s epic The Cremaster Cycle, pornstar Annie Sprinkle’s disquisition on “eco-sexuality,” and a live storytelling series called SLANT, and you’ve begun to taste the SPACE mission: to provide a venue for what is contemporary, emerging, and unconventional.

A room that frequently approaches critical mass with sweaty dance parties certainly limits its full potential as a gallery. Installations in the ilk of Dale Chihuly would not be safe near a mosh pit! For many of us, that tension between art and livability gives SPACE its special flavor. Executive Director Nay May describes it as both the gallery’s “greatest strength” and the “biggest challenge” he’s had to navigate over the years. On July 1, and for the first time since opening in 2002, SPACE will move beyond the one room operation. They’ve usurped an adjacent property in order to have more—ahem—space. 50% more on the floor, 75% more on the wall, to be exact.

“SPACE Gallery annex” will form a dynamic duo with the main room and will moonlight as an all-purpose performance venue. In the words of May, “The dire need in this case was for us to allow some projects more room. This separate space will give us a chance to do some projects, installations, etc. that don’t coexist with other things the way we need most things to coexist in our current space.” The first annex exhibit (I was instructed to use lowercase “a”) will run from July 1 to August 5. It’s a drawing show of New York-based artists who work in various media and explore the shapes, textures, and lines of memory. For more information on “Elia Bettaglio, Selena Kimball and Tatiana Simonova: Drawings” click here.

The extra breathing room also means SPACE will be more amenable to working with local businesses and organizations. They’ve occasionally rented out the main floor for fundraising events and the like. The annex will offer Portland more opportunities to bring communities together within the walls of our creative imagination.

So thank you, SPACE, for giving us more of you! We’re looking forward to what happens next.

Above photos on left: Elia Bettaglio’s drawing “Magnifying Glass”. On right, Tatiana Simonova’s drawing “Eventuality 1.” Both artists will be featured along with Elia Bettaglio in the annex’s opening exhibit.

A base camp is more than your average campground. It’s a launch pad for the expedition. It’s where trails into higher skies begin. This Thursday, in Portland, Maine, twenty emerging local artists will pitch their metaphorical tents, for one night only, at a hip new venue for this city.

Just a minute’s drive off the Peninsula’s East End, 193 Presumpscot Street is an empty beer distribution warehouse that Base Camp organizer Tessa O’Brien describes as a “giant, funky, empty box” of 20,000 square feet. Art will abound between the cement floor and the industrial ceiling fans two dozen feet above. Base Camp intends to share avant-garde work with a community accustomed to a visual arts culture moored at the fifty-ish downtown galleries and museums.

O’Brien says that she and her teammate, 23-year-old Will Sears, hatched the plot for a pop-up exhibition when they realized that Portland harbors boatloads of precocious fresh out of college artists who face steep competition from established creators when vying for the gallery walls. O’Brien and Sears, who count themselves in the young and fresh crowd, will feature their work as they spearhead this effort to wow Portland with its own underground scene.

Sears, a recent graduate of Syracuse University, works in an aesthetic of graffiti, typography, and abstract expressionism – just one sample of the range Base Camp will supply. Using muted tones and natural colors in mediums from spraypaint to charcoal powders, Sears describes his work as “a dialogue between abstract backgrounds and formal characters like letters and figures.” He moved to Portland last November because, unlike other thriving creative cities, this one has a cheap enough cost of living to allow a full studio downtown in his own house. “That’s huge being able to work all the time,” said Sears.

O’Brien is a muralist painter with an ambition “to have art be everywhere and accessible and a part of more people’s lives.” Since graduating from Skidmore a few years ago, she has painted murals regularly for major music festivals, including Bonnaroo and Phish shows. O’Brien recently collaborated with Sears and others on spraypainted signboards for the marketplace and foodstalls at this year’s Coachella. Like Sears, she originally moved here because studio space is so affordable. O’Brien admits that five years ago she would never have pursued a vision like Base Camp in Portland, Maine. “Now I have confidence in Portland’s creative community… [Base Camp] is now a legit need, and I know people will come.”

Who else will you find at Base Camp? Check out the photography of Ben Dehaan or the fashion design of AbbyAbby LLC. “You don’t see their work in the First Friday Art Walk or downtown galleries,” said O’Brien of the twenty artists who will be trailblazing the scene this Thursday, from 6:30 to 9:30. “I’m not opposed to galleries,” she continued. “They’re wonderful. But there needs to be an opportunity to experience art in a different setting.”

The warehouse openness and pioneering atmosphere will segue into an after-party surrounded by the exhibit. Food and drink will accompany danceable soul funk beats by local DJ Kyle Downs. Thankfully, Sears and O’Brien assure that Base Camp is only the beginning of quarterly pop-up shows just as bold.

For a city with as many independent creatives as Portland, coworking is a fact of life. We work in cafés when we need to get out of the house or have a meeting. We collaborate in other people’s homes, offices or studios. But for many freelancers, the idea of renting out professional office space has seemed too expensive, too isolating or not flexible enough for the changing shapes of our work lives and work loads. Enter Peloton Labs, the first purpose built coworking office building in Portland. Picking up on an idea that has bloomed in creative metros from San Francisco to Brooklyn to Berlin, Peloton will have enough space on its two floors for up to 40 workers, with very flexible membership arrangements. You can join for as little as $40 a month for 8 hrs of daytime access or as much as $400 for unlimited 24/7 access with a large dedicated desk and shelf space, and you can change your arrangement month to month. There are a small number of private offices as well at negotiable rates. Members will also have access to conference rooms and high speed wired and wireless internet. The building, located at the former Binga’s Wingas site at Bramhall Square on Congress Street, is striking and modern from the outside, with high ceilings and plenty of natural light within. Innovative real estate developer Peter Bass, who did the iconic East Bayside Studios with Achetype Architects almost a decade ago, has worked with Archetype again to construct an innovative space for what is in fact a creative business solution in itself. Bass, a residential developer, is banking on the fact that by opening up the commercial real estate market lower on the food chain, he can generate more revenue from the space than if he leased it to one or more small companies. Coworking is not new to Portland. SPACE Gallery used to hold regular Jelly coworking events, and Web developer Rob Landry’s office for Pemaquid Communications is currently the anchor for the smaller-scaled Wycwah (When You Can’t Work at Home) coworking space on Maple Street in the Old Port. What will make Peloton more than just a clean and quiet space to work in will be the community that forms there. With that in mind, Peter Bass has been working with crowdsourcing consultant Elizabeth Trice to facilitate the collaborative social processes that will turn the raw space into a place attuned to the needs of its participants. For everyone interested in seeing the space before people start moving in, Peloton will be having an open house on Friday, February 11 from 6-9pm. For more information, contact Elizabeth by email.

Who says you can’t win ‘em all? The creative economy seems to have its own rules. Case in point: the new offices of the VIA Group advertising and marketing agency in the historic Baxter Library building. In one decisive gesture, VIA and Portland have scored a triple win. #1: VIA’s business is expanding into all things digital and they have chosen to relocate, not to New York or Boston, not to South Portland or Westbrook, but from the periphery to the heart of the Downtown Arts District on Congress Street. #2: the new location will also give VIA, and their contribution to the creative economy, a much higher profile in Portland—and Portland’s creative economy, in turn, will gain increased national visibility through VIA’s growth. And #3: the renovation of the Baxter Building itself is an urban preservationist dream—and green to boot. VIA describes how everything has come together in a web site they made about the building: “Northland Enterprises, LLC, of Portland, Maine, acquired the Baxter Library Building from MECA in 2008, and is overseeing the complete renovation of the building. The project is a Historic Renovation project that is approved and monitored by the National Park Service. It is one of the first commercial uses of the new Maine State Historic Tax Credit, which has been instrumental in moving the project forward. The almost 25,000-square-foot building will be energy efficient and apply for LEED silver certification when the work is done.” There’s a lot more to growing a successful business than architecture, of course, but when public policy can help match a unique work space with a unique company in a unique city, it’s a win-win-win for everyone.