February / March 2010

Out of the ashes, new ideas bloom.

Here in Portland, we’re famous for rising like a phoenix after being burned by the British in 1775 and reduced to embers by errant fireworks in 1866.

And I believe we’re going to be better still after recovering from the world’s recent ‘economic difficulties,’ because everywhere around me, I’m sensing people beginning to dream again.

So when a group of local boosters, Navy veterans, and ice-fishing buddies dares to dream of something big, really big–like bringing the aircraft carrier JFK to our waterfront to make Portland the destination attraction we deserve to be (in terms of total tonnage, we’re the sixth biggest seaport on the east coast of the U.S.)–you’ve got to love them.

Why? Because dreams have bycatch, to use a fishing term. Even if we don’t end up with the JFK here, the groundswell of effort required to understand why she is a fabulous idea for this city might instead result in…the convention center we’ve been chasing after for years, or one of the Bath Iron Works destroyers that helped us win World War II sailing up to the docks here as a permanent exhibit to the delight of generations of visitors. Who knows what might happen? Positive energy like this is caviar.

Portland is home to a long line of dreamers for whom the glass isn’t just half full, it’s overflowing. In the 1820s, John Neal wrote that we could make this city “an Athens in the wilderness.”

Then there’s noted architect John Howard Stevens, who envisioned a giant, World’s Fair-like tower with twinkling lights shooting up from (yes, again) a convention center he dreamed of creating on a man-made island we’d build in the middle of Back Cove so people could see us from afar (like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis).

I love the other dreams, too, from fantasies of rock concerts on Fort Gorges (wouldn’t everyone get a bang out of hearing Portland Symphony play the 1812 Overture out there?) to bringing a Soviet submarine that starred in the Harrison Ford movie K19: Widowmaker to the Portland waterfront so we might have a museum, tours, more movie shoots–oops, we let that one get away (I hear she’s in Providence now). Did you know we had a chance for the USS Constitution to be berthed here instead of Boston? Imagine the postcards. Ours for the taking, Old Ironsides gave us the slip (instead of vice versa) in 1931. She even sailed up here for a dress rehearsal (Maine Historical Society has a wonderful photo of her at Maine State Pier).

Whenever I drive over Casco Bay Bridge, I admit to dreaming about it being a suspension bridge like the new one in Boston, because we need bread and circus.

One big dream is transforming Monument Square in front of our eyes. A gigantic motion picture screen is being placed–for real–on the new facade at Portland Public Library to wow downtown crowds. What will play on it? I’d love to see a rotating virtual gallery of masterpieces across the centuries that we all own as taxpayers as part of the Maine State Art Collection, far too big to display in the capitol building. What’s your idea?

When it comes to dreams, we don’t ever have to order from the bottom of the menu.