'Lots' to-do

The South Portland Planning Board is considering how to deal with 47 tax-acquired properties, dating back as early as 1923

SOUTH PORTLAND — It has the second-highest population density in Maine, so, it might be surprising to hear that South Portland is a city rich in land – so rich, in fact, that it’s thinking of putting some of it up for sale.

Of course, one reason the city is land rich is because some of its residents are cash poor.

At its most recent meeting, the South Portland Planning Board spent 90 minutes mulling a list of 47 lots, totaling 11 acres, that the city has taken for back taxes, some as far back as 1923. The lots have a combined assessed value of $1.25 million.

A second workshop is scheduled for June 12, at which time the seven-member board will begin making recommendations on what to do with the properties, all but two of which are vacant lots.

A spreadsheet reviewed by planners contained recommendations from Assistant City Manager Erik Carson – who sidelines as South Portland’s economic development director – and Pat Doucette, the city’s code enforcement officer. As many as 28 house lots can be sold off from the city-owned land, while another 16 parcels, too small to build on, could be offered to abutting landowners.

According to Assistant City Planner Stephen Puleo, the first of those sales could happen as soon as September or October, pending a final decision by the City Council on Planning Board recommendations.

Many of the properties are the final lots in subdivisions, which, after failing to sell, eventually ended up in city hands. Others include unbuilt streets in those subdivisions  –so-called “paper roads” – that could become lots of record with a little paperwork. Other lots were automatically acquired after being effectively abandoned by the estates of deceased residents.

“It’s a case where none of the decedents wanted it, it never got sold, the estate never paid the taxes, and, eventually, it fell to the city,” Puleo said in an interview last week.

There is not particular pattern to the lots, in either size or location.

“They’re all over the city, really,” said Puleo. “What people don’t always understand is that were a lot of subdivisions that were laid out and recorded that may not meet current standards, some that are only 50 feet by 100 feet. Those are lots of record that can be built on.”

Other lots are mysteries, the apparent leftovers of water easements and drainage swells, many of which have belonged to the city since the 1930s and 1940s. In many cases, these lots, some only about 10 feet wide, run between and behind houses, where they are encumbered by fences, and maintained by some or all of the neighboring property owners.

“In many cases, those people may be surprised to learn they do no actually own that land,” said City Planner Tex Haeuser.

More surprising might be what comes after these residents refuse a city offer to buy land they are already using, and may have assumed they owned – an eviction notice.

“If an abutter is using it and does not wish to purchase [the property], he should be notified that he is trespassing,” wrote Doucette of several lots on her list of recommendations.

Although it appears there is revenue to be had, City Manager Jim Gailey said last week that he did not ask planners to take a look at the lots simply to add to city coffers. It was more a matter of housekeeping, he said.

Although the city finance department provides the Planning Board with a list of tax-acquired property each year, the board has not sent the council a list of its ideas for disposition since 2001. The board last reviewed some of the 47 lots 10 or 20 years before that.

Generally, the city “bends over backwards,” said Gailey, to make payment plan arrangements with homeowners, even after formal foreclosure. A three-unit building at 357 Broadway toured by the councilors May 21 is one of the rare instances in recent years in which the city has taken a property. The council is slated to decide at its June 4 meeting what to do with that empty building, with a public auction being chief among the possibilities.

The difference between that lot and the 47 currently under review, Haeuser said, is that all but two among them are vacant lots, a few of which are “landlocked” with no access to an existing city street.

In many cases, Puleo said, those lots were once deemed valuable as open space, and retained by the city. That’s partly because as the city has developed over the decades, environmental impacts have been created that did not necessarily exist when a subdivision was laid out. But, he added, when reviewing the properties one-by-one with the Planning Board, each one should be looked at based on the needs of both the city, the taxpayers and the environment.

“If you don’t re-look at things, then you start to build up this big portfolio of properties,” said Puleo. “That’s sort of what we have now and we’ve reached kind of a critical mass where decisions need to be made at a higher level than previously, when, maybe, only an open space committee looked at it.”

However, one thing Puleo and Gailey agree on is that the city does not intend to flood the market.

“If there are a number of properties that are to be put out to bid, there is a lot of work to be done, so it will take time,” said Puleo.

 A CLOSER LOOK

A list of tax-acquired property up for review in South Portland, many of which might be offered to the public as soon as this fall:

Address           Square Feet     Assessed Value

9 Grove Ave.  5,663   $177,400

74 Cash St.      15,856 $128,700

25 Willard St.  5,550   $118,700

35 Southeast Road      96,703 $75,400

31 Boothby Ave.        11,702 $68,300

120 Evans St.  9,120   $56,700

37 Orlando St. 5,500   $53,800

34 Daytona St.                        5,500   $53,800

290 Ocean St.  5,000   $53,600

183R Evans St.           10,000 $53,000

2 Rossetti Ave.           4,434   $37,500

34 Roosevelt St.          5,000   $35,300

14 Bowdoin Ave.        4,008   $33,200

25 Colonial Ave.         10,000 $30,300

11 Wylie St.    30,536 $29,900

36 Pleasant Ave.         3,441   $27,300

1 Park Ave.     1,830   $23,300

40 Noyes St.   80,150 $21,900

71 Sawyer St.  6,142   $17,800

30 Noyes St.   17,380 $16,000

17R Paddock Place     47,916 $15,000

48 Calais St.    3,720   $13,700

274R Pleasant Ave.    4,700   $12,800

5 Mussey St.  3,515   $8,500

780 Sawyer St.            12,676 $7,900

128 Jordan Ave.          4,560   $7,700

26 Walnut St.  2,700   $7,400

110 School St. 4,579   $7,000

21 Dresser Road         3,572   $6,900

14 Dresser Road         2,000   $5,800

12 Holden St.  3,300   $5,400

81 Sunset Ave.            2,500   $5,400

231 Margaret St. 6,241           $3,900

228 Margaret St.         6,775   $3,900

62 Robert Mills Road 1,278   $3,900

24R Noyes Road        1,278   $3,900

9 Romano Road          2,070   $3,000

14 Brigham St.            2,047   $2,800

1932 Broadway          2,460   $2,700

68 Hillcrest Ave.         1,525   $2,600

45 Norman St. 10,200 $1,900

35 Norman St. 5,000   $1,800

20 Chestnut St.           1,176   $1,200

115 Simmons Road     250      $700

176 Sawyer St.            497      $600

58 Skillings St.            316      $400

2 Glendale Rd.            50        $100

City’s history home now complete

With renovation finished on its museum, the South Portland Historical Society looks forward to a busy summer

South Portland Historical Society Executive Director
Kathryn DiPhilippo, left, and intern Libby Chenevert stand before a hand-dyed, hooked rug depicting George
 Washington Cash and his peddler’s cart at the famous
 corner that now bears his name. Made by Cash’s daughter-
in-law in the late 19^th century, the folk-art rug is one
 of many items on display at the newly refurbished society
museum at Bug Light Park.

SOUTH PORTLAND — Three years after it was relocated to its home at the entrance to Bug Light Park, the South Portland Historical Society museum is finally finished.

The fact that the museum has been a work in progress has not discouraged visitors. Executive Director Kathryn DiPhilippo says attendance was up 70 percent last year, to about 4,000 for the season. But thanks to $25,500 in grants and gifts, the building opened May 7 with widened doorways and new carpeting for improved handicapped access, a fresh coat of paint, a rebuilt entryway with a new visitor registry, and a refurbished cupola.

“I feel like this year is the year we’ve finally finished,” said DiPhilippo, during a recent tour.

Donations included $12,000 from the Davis Family Foundation, $5,000 from Marshall and Ruth-Anne Gibson and $5,000 grant from the Maine State Archives, in addition to two Maine Community Foundation grants – $2,500 from the Rines/Thompson Fund and $1,000 from the Edward H. Daveis Benevolent Fund. 

About half of the money was used to plug leaks in the cupola, where water was leaking in through rotten wood around a dozen window panes. Society volunteers noticed the problem soon after the move, upon finding it odd to discover water stains in the ceiling despite a new roof. Rebuilding the cupola was a priority because the society’s archives, including more than 5,000 old photographs, are housed on the building’s second floor. DiPhilippo is quick to point out that water, humidity and mold are the enemies of all ephemera.

Interestingly, much like most of the interior of what was once mistakenly known as the Captain Nichols House, the cupola is not original.

“Although this is a historic building, there’s nothing historic left,” said DiPhilippo. “It couldn’t be on the historic register because of all the architectural changes that have happened to this building, including being gutted by fire several times.”

The brick house was donated to the society in 2009 by the Portland Pipeline Corporation on the condition that it be moved from its location on Madison Street, which happened on Valentine’s Day that year.

The building was renamed the Cushing’s Point House at that time, when it was discovered that it was not near old enough to have belonged to its purported owner. DiPhilippo chalks up the mistake, which included placement of an historic plaque, to poor research, poor memories and popular misconceptions.

The building was the last remaining vestige of the old Cushing Point community, kept by the U.S. Navy when it took everything else between its shipyards by eminent domain because, DiPhilippo theorizes, it was made of brick and practically on the waterfront, which was true even at its old location, prior to landfilling by the Navy along the breakwater to Bug Light that buried the primeval geography of Cushing Point.

It was during World War II that the building came to be known as the Captain’s House. However, that was not due to prior ownership by Nichols or anyone else. Instead, the building was where Liberty Ship captains would decamp until assignment.

Museum photos from the shipyard era show the Captain’s House sporting no cupola at all. Although it’s believed the building, thought to date to about 1900, has a cupola when first built, it was removed at some point before World War II, after which a new, larger version was added.

While the newly pristine Cushing Point House is a story in itself, the museum is the showpiece, featuring newly updated exhibits thanks in part to something else that’s new, an intern from the University of Southern Maine, Libby Chenevert, brought on in January to help catalog the society’s archives.

“It’s was interesting to see the real history side of things, as opposed to just reading about it in school,” said Chenevert.

DiPhilippo says the historical society is always on the hunt for items of real history to add to its collection. Items can be new or old, so long as they relate specifically to South Portland, either before or after the 1895 split with Cape Elizabeth.

“It’s a misunderstanding that Cape Elizabeth has a long history and that South Portland is the newer town when, actually, it’s the reverse,” DiPhilippo said.

Although the historic name was Cape Elizabeth from the split with Falmouth in 1765, it was the farmers of the town that now holds that name who effected the separation, after refusing to be taxed for water, road and infrastructure improvements in the urban area of town, along the mouth of the Fore River. At that time, the Cape Elizabeth town hall was at the corner of Sawyer and Ocean streets, where the planning and development office (the former Hamlin School) is today.

However, because what is now South Portland intended to annex itself to Portland, from which it would get its water, it let Cape walk away from the divorce with the family name. The surprise came when Portland voters, who also had an aversion to sharing South Portland’s debt, voted down the annexation.

Once that door was closed, South Portland incorporated as a city in 1898, but saddled with a name signifying it as a suburb of its big sister across the river.

“I hear it all the time, ‘Why didn’t they come up with a new name, why are we stuck being South Portland?’” DiPhilippo said. “I think that’s why ‘SoPo’ is making such huge gains. Everyone seems to be embracing that, except for older residents, of course, because it promotes an identity that doesn’t make people from away think we’re just the southern part of Portland.”

Scarborough student honored for service

Morgan Chaput, 9, of Scarborough, with his newfound
friend, Bob Pratt, 77, at the Maine Veterans Home
following Memorial Day observances Monday. Chaput
was recently recognized with a special citizenship award
 by the school district for his volunteerism, which includes weekly visits to the veterans home.

SCARBOROUGH — Scarborough fourth-grader Morgan Chaput has a lot of friends, and not all of them in his age bracket. In fact, some the 9-year-old’s newest friends are of a decidedly different generation – residents of the Maine Veterans Home in Scarborough, where Chaput has been making weekly visits since October.

In May, the Scarborough School Board honored Chaput with a special citizenship award for his visits to help cheer men and women long past their prime years as members of America’s armed forces.

“We want to make sure that we are paying attention and recognizing kids who are going above and beyond like that when it comes to their civic responsibilities,” said Superintendent Dr. George Entwistle III, who instituted the awards as part of an 18-month improvement plan for the district.

“One of our long-term foals is to really encourage students toward good citizenship, in the classroom, in the school, and in the community, in the hopes that as they get older, they’ll take that to an even broader reach to the country and across the globe.”

While visiting the Veterans’ Home on Memorial Day, Chaput admitted he was “kind of a little embarrassed” by the certificate presentation. After all, he had not set out to win any awards.

“I just like to interact with other people,” he said. “I just feel like giving back to other people who served us and need help.”

Of course, as Chaput’s parents tell it, there was slight nudge.

“He didn’t do a sport so we said, ‘Morgan, you’ve got to do something, you can’t just sit around the house,’” said his father, Peter Chaput, a salesman for Creative Office.

“He’s a good kid,” said his mother, Molly, a massage therapist at Lucinda’s Day Spa. “We’re just trying as parents to guide him as best we can.”

It’s possible some of that guidance came into play when Chaput announced that what he’d like to do after school is visit veterans.

“I was pretty pleased with that, actually” said his father. “As a family, we’re pretty serious about veterans. If you don’t serve yourself, the one thing we feel you can do is honor and respect these guys. So, if we can bring Morgan up that way, that’s one more generation that really respects people who did a lot for us.”

Molly Chaput also observes that her son has “a real fascination with military history.”

“I’m big into World War II and I like history a lot,” said Morgan, adding that he’s not really sure why. “It’s been so long, I can’t remember.”

Morgan was “a little nervous” on that first visit back in October, but, with all of the vintage World War II photographs lining the hallways, he was primed and ready by the time he got to the home’s rec room.

“It was just really cool to talk to them,” he recalled.

By the third visit, Morgan met Bob Pratt, 77, and the pair “formed a real attachment,” said his mother.

“He loves to talk,” she said. “He loves to tell stories, so, he made it really easy for us to come here.”

Pratt was born in Keene, N.H., and moved to Portland with his family at age 14, eventually entering military service as a M.P. during the Korean conflict, later logging three years as driver to a three-star general. Pratt then parlayed his time with the military police into several years with both the Portland Police Department and the Maine State Police, among “many, many other jobs.”

“It amazes me that a young man of that age would be interested in us when most boys his age only care about baseball and football and whatnot,” said Pratt. “He has a big heart and is very interested in learning about previous wars and the experiences of servicemen. I think that’s wonderful.”

Although they “get outside sometimes,” Morgan said he and Pratt primarily play Wii.

“It really doesn’t take much. Instead of sitting home and playing video games, get out there,” said Molly Chaput, noting what Morgan seemed to grasp without being told, “There’s plenty of residents who don’t have anybody. Just having a young person show an interest means a lot.”

“I think both of us have enjoyed the relationship,” said Pratt, noting that he enjoys talking about his military service as much as Morgan likes to listen, while he returns the favor by listening to stories about Chaput family trips and the military equipment spied along the way.

“He’s very sharp,” Pratt said. “He picks things up. He’s really got an interest in knowing what’s going on.”

Pratt, the father of four daughters, even gave Chaput a military and commemorative coin.

“He said, ‘If I’d ever has a son, I’d want him to have this,” said Molly Chaput, choking back emotion and appearing to tear up a little at the memory.

Still, of all his interest in 20^th century warfare, Chaput said he has no aspiration to join the military himself. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Chaput shrugs an “I have no idea” answer to the typical what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up question.

“It’s just about giving back,” he said of his senior visits, seemingly unconcerned that, at age 9, he probably has yet to take enough that he needs to worry about balancing the scales.

His visits with Pratt and other veterans are not Chaput’s only contributions to the community, his mother said proudly.

In January, he and his father, along with Dr. Scott Chase and his son, Erich, made and sold survival bracelets, raising a combined $850 for the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital. On Sunday, Chaput plans to run a stand during Maine Lemonade Sunday in hopes of raising enough money to buy an indoor/outdoor putting green for Pratt and other residents of the veterans’ home.

It’s enough to make Molly Chaput shake her head in wonder.

“We hope it will be an ongoing thing, doing charity and volunteer work,” she said, with a smile. “I don’t think enough kids do that, so we hope his interests in that continue.”

“I think that there are just so many opportunities for the schools to be connected to the community,” said Entwistle, noting that Chaput was recognized in the Wentworth Intermediate School newsletter prior to receiving the citizenship award. 

“We plan to both continue and expand those types of recognition, to increase those experiences for students,” said Entwistle. “We hope to really reinforce and encourage the type of citizenship that Morgan has displayed.”

What his spirit of volunteerism might take Chaput is anyone’s guess, but Pratt, for one, has no doubts.

“I think that young fella is going to be a candidate for president of the United States one day,” he said, with a wide grin.

A CLOSER LOOK

Morgan Chaput, 9, of Scarborough will be raising money at Maine Lemonade Day this Sunday to buy an indoor/outdoor putting green for use by residents of the Maine Veterans Home, located on Route 1. To donate to the cause, visit Chaput’s lemonade stand Sunday, in the parking lot of the Hannaford Supermarket in Scarborough.

Blight worries beekeepers

American foulbrood’s return puts local hives at risk

REGION — If you happen to see a blue honeybee buzzing about your flowers, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. It was spray painted that way, and not by teens committing a summertime prank.

The bees, marked by volunteers with the Maine State Beekeepers Association “swarm team,” had been raiding a dead hive beneath the eves of a home on Sawyer Street in South Portland, near the Cape Elizabeth town line. The volunteers removed the hive May 12, and sections were sent to the U.S. Department of Agriculture “Bee Lab” in Beltsville, Md. for analysis. On May 24, Erin McGregor-Forbes of Portland, beekeepers association president, distributed the bad news – American foulbrood is back.

Long absent from Maine before making a limited return engagement in recent years, American foulbrood is a rod-shaped bacterium that feeds on bee larvae less than three days old. Within two to three breeding cycles – about six weeks – it can turn a once-vibrant hive into a crumbling corpse.

Now, beekeepers in South Portland, Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough are on the lookout for those blue bees, which could prove to be harbingers of death after ransacking the brood-filled hive on Sawyer Street of its remaining honey, inadvertently tracking up millions of microscopic spores during the raid for transplant to new victims.

“Really, it’s like a kind of plague,” said backyard beekeeper Louise Sullivan of Cape Elizabeth on Friday. “Everybody has to really be on their toes, because it can jump like checkers from yard to yard and spread very rapidly.”

American foulbrood is not, says Sullivan, related to the so-called “colony collapse disorder” that has mystified apiarists nationwide for the last few years. It that case, the hives are found vacant, all of the bees appearing to have just wandered off. But with foulbrood, which Sullivan said is “well defined and millions of years old,” the larvae remain, rotting in their cells, each body a host to more than 100 million spores.

Described by the USDA as “the most widespread and destructive” of bee diseases, American foulbrood can easily decimate honeybees in a wide region by hopscotching the 3-mile flying radius of drones.

“Unfortunately, this means we will all need to be particularly vigilant in this area with regard to colony health inspections for some years to come,” wrote McGregor-Forbes, in an email to area beekeepers. “There is nothing you can do at this point other than watch and hope.”

“It will start showing up probably within the next couple of weeks,” said Sullivan on Friday. 

A beekeeper for going on six years, Sullivan maintains two hives at her home on Two Lights Road. Part of a growing “informal association” of Cape residents who keep bees as a hobby – there are, she says, “probably 60 hives” at 17 homes in town – Sullivan spent Saturday inspecting the cells of her colonies.

“It’s been an amazing journey for me,” said Sullivan, a self-described “big gardener,” who took up beekeeping upon retirement as a way to help along the natural world from which she’s long taken produce.

“I’ve always been grateful for the bees and thought maybe, because of where I live, I could provide a little haven for them,” she said. “It’s been an amazing journey for me. It’s just astounding to have had the privilege of observing a bee colony.”

What Sullivan was looking for on Saturday, however, was the telltale characteristics of a hive that has succumbed to the disease. These include sunken, perforated cells which, when subjected to the “toothpick test,” produce what Sullivan calls “long, slimy, ropey stuff.” That stuff is what remains from the body of what was once a baby bee.

There is no cure for American foulbrood. All that can be done is to destroy an infected hive, preferably by burning, in hopes of breaking the deadly cycle. But the bacterium is resilient. According to state apiarist Tony Jadczak, it can survive dormant on tool handles and other garden implements for as long as 40 years.

That’s a concern given the recent rise in beekeeping as a hobby in Maine. Apart from the 52,000 hives brought into Maine each year by 36 commercial operators – largely for apple and blueberry pollination – there are thought to be more than 1,000 amateur beekeepers manning at least 8,000 hives in Maine, based on Maine State Beekeepers Association membership rolls and enrollment at University of Maine Cooperative Extension workshops.

Of these, 6,975 hives were registered with the state by 621 beekeepers in 2010, the most recent year for which a full count is available. Reflecting a recent trend, that rate of registration is up 150 hobbyists since 2008 – a 32 percent increase.

South Portland had a single known beekeeper in 2008, when it passed an ordinance governing the activity. Last year, the City Council tightened those rules based partly on concern about continued growth of the activity.

Meanwhile, the growth in beekeeping has far outpaced the state’s ability to track disease. According to Jadczak in his most recent annual report, delivered April 20, 2011, the lack of a part-time summer inspector since 2008 has cut back the number of hives he’s able to look at each year. In the 2010 random survey, just 1,416 colonies, both private and commercial, were opened. Of those, 29 (2.05 percent) were infested with American foulbrood.

“There is undoubtedly more active AFB in the area,” said McGregor-Forbes, advising beekeepers to clean their hands and tools with alcohol when moving between colonies and offering inspection assistance from the beekeepers association.

The concern is that not all hobbyists will get the message, or that those who do, having more love than financial interest in their hives, may be reluctant to destroy their hives at the first sign of blight.

If foulbrood does show up, it would likely hit hardest in the strongest hives, because they have the “most foraging vigor,” said McGregor-Forbes.

Unfortunately, because the Sawyer Street hive was being actively robbed “for quite some time,” it’s likely too late for pesticides like Terramycin, while using antibiotics at this point “will only mask the symptoms,” she said.

“It is really vital that anyone who has bee hives register them with the state,” said Sullivan. “If anybody sees anything that concerns them about their hives, they should contact the MSBA or the state.”

But for now, Sullivan said, it’s mostly a waiting game, to see just how serious this problem is going to be and how widespread the die-off might become.

“Now, all we can do is do regular hive inspections,” she said.