 I'm Leslie McVane. Welcome to Portland Media Center's member highlight. Today we're out at beautiful Fort Gorgeous with the Friends of Fort Gorgeous and with the Portland Parks Conservancy who are looking at this as one of the potential landmarks and park areas that they will work with. I'm with Roger Burley who's the president of Friends of Fort Gorgeous. Hi Roger. Hello Leslie. Thank you for coming out here as part of member highlights because we are members of PMC. Yeah but we like to come out here whenever we can. So today you are bringing the Portland Parks Conservancy which is a new organization. It's a sort of an arm of the city and it is what it sounds like. They're charged with, they're funded independently or non-profit and generously funded and we're hoping that we will be one of the four, we are one of the four finalists. Maybe I don't know if we need to go to two or one to get significant support for the Conservancy but they have money for us and so they're looking at us versus three other parks and today they're coming out here because almost none of them have been here before and so they need to see and feel and taste and touch Fort Gorgeous. So what in particular do you want them to take away with them today and you want our viewers to know about? We want them to know that we as a friends group all volunteer, all voluntary, we are pushing ourselves towards the city to be stewards of this fort. The city has a lot more important things perhaps to take care of but this is an iconic image that people standing on the shore of Portland, South Portland, Harbor and we'll see this and say oh boy what's that? I wish I could go there someday. Well here it is the problem is that the beauty is it's here it's been here since 1858 and it's and it's available to the public which is just absolutely incredible benefit. It's easy to get here by canoe, kayak, small outboard boat. We also have brought tour people out here tour the tour boaters along the providers along the waterfront can bring people here anytime they want and they come but we would like to kind of gather all of the touring of Fort Gorgeous together to raise friends. We collect their names and so we can communicate them with them by email and then of course money comes into play we're a non-profit. This fort needs anywhere from fifty to hundred thousand dollars a year so that it doesn't go backwards and can maybe with a little more money move forward. The fort itself has some serious structural problems. We want to create awareness and we want to offer ourselves and our energies to the city so that we can help them take care of this unique asset. Well and for those of us who are on the mainland looking out it's probably one of the most romantic images we have when we look out to the harbor and I think that there are so many people in the city who would miss this structure if it was not preserved as a lovely park. Absolutely and it would be criminal to let this go it's been here for what's a hundred and sixty one years or something like that whatever the math is and it's survived without much assistance for most of that time but now it needs assistance and we're we're proposing ourselves as stewards and advocates. So yeah the ten to twenty million dollars that is required to really stabilize it for the next two hundred and fifty years that's not going to come from our efforts but maybe we can get it out there so it's a really reasonable possibility. So people if you've got ten to twenty million just write a check to Friends of Fort Gorgeous and we'll see what we can do to save this place. Thank you. Even if you have ten to twenty dollars send it in get on our mailing list and send it into the Friends of Fort Gorgeous and we can take ourselves to the city manager and the city council and and say here we are we're actually helping. Well thank you so much Roger. Thank you Leslie. Well I'm now with Nan Cumming who is the the new executive director of the Portland Parks Conservancy. Hi Nan. Hello. It's nice to see you outside again. Oh it's great to be here. It's a wonderful day. Now why are you here with Friends of Fort Gorgeous today? Well the Portland Parks Conservancy was recently formed just last year and our mission is to support public parks and recreational projects in Portland. So what's going on at Fort Gorgeous and the efforts of the Friends is of great interest to us and we're very excited today to learn more. Many of the people here have never been here before. Fort Gorgeous is such a special place it's so incredibly unique in the country let alone in Portland that it's something that we're very very excited about. Well we're excited about it too and all of us in Portland who look at this every day are hoping that together everyone can work and and save this beautiful place. Yeah it's certainly worth it for for residents and for for tourists who want to come to Maine and see something really special. Well thank you and we look forward to seeing what you come up with at your organization. Thank you so much. I'm now with Paul Drainin. Hi Paul from Friends of Fort Gorgeous. It's great to see you again. Thank you so much for joining us here on the tour where the Portland Parks Conservancy. What a fun tour. Are there a lot of new things since I was last year? A few changes. Everyone's happy to see the Army Corps improvements and we're really close to getting our access project permit underway which will allow us to bring larger vessels up alongside the Stone Wharf. We've got the Portland Parks Conservancy involved now and we hope to have them helping us with funding for our preservation plan which will quite literally put cribbing in and save the fort. We've expanded our tours. We've contracted with the Fog Brothers on their new Fog Cat vessel for 2019 so we'll be doing more tours this year. If you want to tour just go to friendsoffortgorgeous.org and you can book a tour there. We also have an art benefit coming up called Fortitude at Arta in Falmouth on June 21. We've got 18 local artists all doing art that was inspired by Fort Gorgeous or Casco Bay. Well we hate to leave the fort but the tide is calling us so we will be heading back to Portland now. Thank you. This is Leslie McVane for Portland Media Center.