Eastland's Plans for Congress Square

As someone who looks over the "park" everyday, it is little more than a place where people drink, piss and fight. Unless someone else comes in with a few million dollars to change it into a better designed park, then the hotel should be able to use it.
PressHerald:

The owners of the Eastland Park Hotel are asking the city for permission to build a ballroom on Congress Square Plaza as part of a multimillion-dollar renovation and expansion of the 85-year-old hotel.
The ballroom would take up nearly all of the public park. Advocates for the homeless and many residents of the neighborhood said the city should improve the park rather than sell it to developers.
The city established Congress Square Plaza in 1981, after a Dunkin' Donuts shop at the site was torn down. The plaza has never been popular. In his blog about architecture and town planning, Portland architect Michael Belleau describes the plaza as a "sunken, empty, tar-covered space often filled with vagrants."

B&W Holga photos - Art Walk 5/4

Frank Poole

Holga black & white photographs

Opening May 4, 2012 First Friday Artwalk

Portland Photo Works

Michael Shuman at SPACE

Michael Shuman: Local Dollars, Local Sense

Thursday 05.03.2012, Starts at 7:00 PM, free, All Ages

A growing body of evidence suggests that the most promising way to create new jobs is to nurture new, small, and locally owned new businesses. Small, local businesses constitute roughly half a typical community’s economy, and even more in rural areas and small towns. Yet almost none of Americans’ $30 trillion in long-term savings—in stocks, bonds, pension funds, mutual funds, and insurance funds—goes into these businesses.

In his new book, Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity (Chelsea Green, 2012), Michael Shuman argues that the most important economic stimulus opportunity for the United States today—and one that would cost almost nothing to implement—would be to relax securities laws that stand in the way investing in local business.

Shuman will discuss how new investment tools – including those just legalized in a new Crowdfunding Law – could begin to move as much as $15 trillion to local economies and create millions of new jobs. There will be time available for questions and answers.

Presented by Portland Buy Local. Longfellow Books will be on-site selling copies of Shuman’s books. Portland’s Downtown District will be providing 2 hours of free parking to attendees of the lecture. Wild Iris Inn, Tsunami Tattoo and Coffee By Design are also sponsors of the event.

Portfringe 2012

"Fringe theatre is traditionally innovative, obscure, new, subversive and edgy. Projects that mix media, push boundaries, and expand the idea of theatre. It is compact and portable. Fringe is theater on the outskirts of normal. 

Portland Theater Collaborative is a group of local designers, actors, directors, and administrators, committed to creating a focal point for ongoing collaboration in the southern Maine theater community. PORTFRINGE 2012 will be our first event, June 26 – July 1, 2012."

Portfringe 

Coast City Comicon - Kickstarter drive

Help support Portland's 2012 Comicon

"In summer of 2011, we decided to put on a comic convention in downtown Portland, Maine -- something that had never really been done before. Knowing that we wanted to have the first ever Coast City Comicon in November, we spent the summer planning, booking venues, and contacting creators, vendors, and guest speakers. With virtually no budget, we put on an amazing convention featuring 50 vendors, video game tournaments, the east coast premiere of Warren Ellis: Captured Ghosts, the release of The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, and panels by special creative guests, including Todd Dezago,Craig Rousseau and Renae De Liz. See this article by the Bangor Daily Newsto see photos and highlights from last year's convention.
Why Kickstarter?
Although the response from our 700 attendees was resoundingly positive, we knew we could do even better. The theme for this year's convention? More. We want more vendors, more guests, more panels, more special events, and we know you do, too. That's where Kickstarter comes in. By donating through Kickstarter, you have the opportunity to contribute to our next convention's success."

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/382061767/coast-city-comicon

Vintage Congress Street

via Corey Something

Pedicabs Coming

"Maine Pedicab will debut in the coming weeks with a soft launch. Drivers will test out different routes with one to three bike taxis, or "pedicabs," at a time before the eight-cab fleet is unleashed. "The goal is within two months people will see a lot of pedicabs out," says Bruce. The pedicabs look like normal bikes in the front, but the back features a two-person seat. 

Bruce cites streets like Commercial, Congress and Fore and the area surrounding Hadlock Field as potential pedicab hot spots. "Sporting events are a big thing, as well as tourism, cruise ships and the geography of a city," all in Portland's favor, he says. "A very circular, small city where people can walk in a very short time is not a very good pedicab market."
The company's Portland headquarters -- a warehouse space in the East End's Portland Company Building -- will ensure easy access to tourists traipsing through the Old Port or coming off cruise ships." - MaineBiz

Quimby Bails on Portland

"After merging her Portland-based artists' colony project with the Maine College of Art last month, Roxanne Quimby is now selling 769 Congress St., the brownstone where the artists' residency program operated for less than two years. It will be the third building in Portland's arts district that the co-founder of Burt's Bees has bought and sold related to her idea for an artists' colony. The 8,000-square-foot building, which she has restored and renovated, is on the market for $1,295,000."

- PressHerald

Mumford & Sons, Eastern Prom 8/4/12

"The State Theatre, which is promoting the event scheduled Aug. 4, anticipates that more than 12,000 people will attend the “Gentlemen of the Road” concert featuring the British band Mumford & Sons.
Organizers hope that the daylong event, on a Saturday, will spill over into the rest of the city by nightfall. For the “after concert party,” smaller, indoor venues would host the local musicians who will be opening acts for Mumford & Sons.
Portland’s City Council approved the concert proposal Monday night by an 8-0 vote. On the advice of its attorney, the council stipulated that the State Theatre agree to a contract detailing conditions that must be met to protect the public’s safety.
Lauren Wayne, general manager of the State Theatre and State Theatre Presents, said she learned two weeks ago that Portland had been chosen as one of only four cities in the United States, and eight worldwide, to host the Mumford & Sons 2012 concert tour." - PressHerald