 My name is Alan Cunningholm, I'm president of the Portland Society for Architecture. Portland Society for Architecture is a volunteer, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping Portland build better. Our organization is comprised of community members, community organizations, builders, architects, anybody that is involved or interested in the built environment from sustainability to how we grow. We are pleased to be partnering with Creative Portland and Gross Smart Main on this event because we share some of this common mission about livability, vitality, responsibility, and sustainability of the city of Portland and the opportunities that it presents. We have a good problem here in Portland, let me say that again, we have a good problem. Folks that have visited Portland love Portland, they want to be here. So the question really for us is not that we're going to grow but how we grow. At PSA we believe that public dialogue is the key to helping Portland build better. Thank you for coming today and being part of this conversation and I really want to say this is a conversation and I hope everyone feels relaxed. After that first session, thank you very much, Mariety. I'm awake now, I think. But before welcoming our special speaker this morning, we would like to take a moment to thank our sponsors and organizations and businesses that stepped up to support this event. It's a real testament once again to how much our community values well-informed discussion around issues that we face together. I'm going to name all the contributors, please hold your response and your applause, hopefully until the end. The University of Southern Maine, CPB2, Portland Bi Local, Portland Downtown District, Portland Housing Development Corporation, Portland Regional Chamber, Random Orbit, Peaks Island Council, USM Environmental Finance Center, and Art at Work. Please join me in extending a hearty round of applause to all of our supporters. I'd now like to invite Glenn Cummings, President of the University of Southern Maine. Thank you, Alan. All of you will be speaking before the guest speaker today. So one at a time we'll go up just as we have. I just want to welcome you. I have to say, you know, I've lived all my adult life. I grew up up the coast in a small village, but I've lived all my adult life for about 35 years here in Portland. And what does it say that truly on a Saturday morning, 200 people show up to talk about the future of Portland? It is an amazing statement. And we are pleased to welcome you and be part of it. To be a part of a sponsor, one of our faculty, Ryan Wallace, will be talking about what it means from the university perspective and economic growth and what we can do around economic growth. I just want to say that it is such a joy to be able to host you today and to be able to celebrate you. A great university should be doing exactly this. And later in this week, Mayor Brennan and a couple other candidates will be out on the stage debating. These are the kind of things that we should be doing as a great university. We're just really proud to be able to do that. I just want to say, before the mayor comes up, I just want to say that one of my first decisions was seemingly an odd decision as president when I came in on July 1. We don't have a lot of money. We have to be very tight. We have a lot of assets, but not a lot of cash. But I wanted to spend about $6,000 to send a woman who works for us to Denmark. I wanted to do this because she is our sustainability coordinator, and she did not ask me for this. I wanted to do it because I believe that a university has to be a model for a variety of good reasons. A model in sustainability. And Denmark has proven itself to be a model of sustainability. And I want, when she came back, there was an entire delegation that came from me. She was part of that. When she came back, I said, what did you learn? It turns out that Denmark had made a goal. This is a phenomenal goal for us in the United States. They had made a goal, but by 2050, they would not be net neutral. They're almost already there. They would be net positive in every building in Denmark. And they're ahead of schedule, ahead of schedule. And I said, what did you learn? What could we learn as a community and as a university? You know what she said? She said, we have to stop doing it alone. We can only do it in communities. Entire Danish communities. Cities as big as Portland. Towns as small as Five Islands, Maine, where I grew up. They were getting together because right now, solar and geothermal, it is still often the privilege of the middle class and the upper classes. They were getting together as communities and saying, what could we do together that means that we could share our sustainability goals as a community? And that was the most important learning that she brought home. The fact that you're here today means that you already get that. You already understand that these one-off, it's nice that Glenn Cummings and his wife invest in solar panels. It's a great thing, but it doesn't move the needle much. The only way this works is if we do what places like Asheville have done and start to ask the question, what do we do together? So I'll finish also by saying that I love the title of this program today. And I'm not a psychologist or a social worker, but if you love something, you won't kill it. I have a great day. And now I'd like to introduce this mayor of the city of Portland, Michael Brennan, who will introduce our keynote speaker. Well, I have good news for all of you. Jennifer Hutchins told me I have to stick to the script that she has given me. And I intend to do that. But I also have to say I am a social worker and Glenn, I love you. And it's great to have you President of the USM. So thank you very much. I've had the opportunity. I just asked Mayor Manheimer, this is her first visit to the city of Portland. I've been to Asheville twice. And you know, last year, Biz Magazine rated Portland as one of the 14 places to visit in 2014 in the world, in the entire world. So you only have 13 other places to visit now, and you'll be able to get to those 14. So I'm delighted to have all of you here. I agree with President Cummings that this is a great turnout for Saturday morning in Portland. To have all the partners up here with such a compelling title is really going to be an invigorating day. It always helps to have somebody come from another part of the country and help us think through and work through these very important issues. So welcome and thank you for being here today. Mayor Manheimer was first elected to the Asheville City Council in 2009 and elected Vice Mayor by her peers in 2011. She was selected Mayor in 2013. Esther currently serves as a Regional Metropolitan Sewage District Board of Directors. I'm sure that's not your most favorite thing that you do. But she also is the Hub Community Economic Development Alliance. She serves on the Land of Sky Regional Council, the Asheville Area Riverfront Redevelopment Commission, the Southern Conference Local Organizing Committee, and the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. Quite a lineup. She is a graduate of Asheville High School, and she earned her law degree and her Masters of Public Affairs from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her Masters of Art degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Interesting combination, so I'm sure that will come into play today. And she's a partner in the Van Winkle Law Firm in Asheville where she specializes in land and commercial litigation. Mayor Manheimer was recently named to the 2016 list of best lawyers in America by the most respected peer review publication, Best Lawyers. Esther has been earned honors such as being named the 2009 Tribute Woman of Awards Honoree presented by the YWCA of Asheville, the 2013 most valuable mountain area lawyer award from the Pagash Legal Services for the most attorney hours volunteered to low income clients and urgent needs. And she was nominated in 2013 by the North Carolina Bar Association William Thorpe Pro Bono Service Award and a 2014 Leader in the Law Honoree awarded by Lawyers Weekly. And you are mayor at the same time. Good for you. She is a mother of three boys age 8, 11, and 13, and she's married to Mark Harris, a social studies teacher at Enneka High School who coaches Enneka's award-winning wrestling team. Esther is the past president of the Asheville Jewish Community Center Board. So clearly Mayor Manheimer will bring a number of different perspectives here today both her legal background as a parent, as the mayor of Asheville and also with a little bit of arts thrown in. So thank you very much. I will be around later today and I look forward to a very spirited discussion. And welcome Mayor Manheimer. Thank you. Good morning. I don't know what all of yours, Myers-Briggs, are your personality, but we could probably go through that, but if you're one of those people who wants to stick to an agenda, you're probably freaking out right now because we're way behind. I'm a little bit like that. So first I want to introduce my husband, Mark Harris, who is here somewhere. There he is. We didn't bring all those kids that were mentioned, but it is such an honor and a pleasure to be here. We arrived yesterday and promptly went for a run and went all around sort of just looking around and we then went to dinner last night and read one article in the paper about some of what's going on here and then I woke up this morning and read another article and realized that where we had wandered around yesterday was in one of the areas that is apparently one of your controversies currently. So I love a community that is engaged and with that engagement includes a healthy debate and so that looks like what you've got going on right now. We too, and Asheville, I'm not up for reelection right now, thank goodness, but we have a council election right now and we've got a park issue that's real hotly debated right now and I always say that it's a sign of a vibrant community if you have a good park debate running. So this is, it feels like home already. Speaking of home, so this is a picture of Asheville just to give you a view of it. It is nestled on sort of a plateau in the Blue Ridge Mountains and here's a map that you can see. Asheville is right there. It's about two hours from Charlotte and two hours from Knoxville. This is a little bit deceiving because you've got to go up and down the mountain to get to these places. So it's not sort of a straight shot drive but it's there nestled right there in the Blue Ridge Mountains and we're right on the Blue Ridge Parkway. So that's why we end up being a destination spot for a lot of people and here's just a little bit about Asheville. I love to learn about other cities and do a little comparing and so I thought I'd tell you a little bit about us. This is how many residents we now have, 87,236. Asheville has always been kind of a steadily growing community. It's never dipped in population really but it's never really boomed in population until very recently. One of the challenges of being on the best top 10 and best top number 14 or whatever the case may be is that you become an attractive place for people to come. So we're starting to see our population now growing faster than the rate of the state, the state's population growth. And North Carolina has been growing pretty steadily. I think it's one of the faster growing states. We're almost up to about 10 million people in North Carolina. So we now also have seen quite an increase in tourism and we have about 9.8 million tourists coming to Asheville now every year. That is also a growing number for us. Here's another nice shot of Asheville. I'll give you a little bit of perspective. This slide is just intended to show you that Asheville is made up of a whole lot of different networks. We have to work with a lot of partners in order to be successful. So let me just tell you a little bit about politics. But first I want to, I'm very proud of our city building. You see the city of Asheville right there is just over this pink building. They call it the snow cone, upside down snow cone or something. And that is the city hall. It's done in an art deco style and we're very proud of it. And then the more boring county building is right there next to us. There was actually a matching design to city hall done by the same architect, but the county rejected it. So we have to work with all of these different partners because even though Asheville is a very popular city and I don't know how many of you have all heard of it or how many of you have ever been to Asheville? Whoa, okay, so a lot of you have been there. You know, you'd think we could kind of do whatever we wanted because we're just such a cool place. But we totally cannot do whatever we want. And part of the reason is because although Asheville is 87,000 people it is only a third of the population of the whole county, Buncombe County. So two thirds of the people live in the county and not in the city. And so we don't even have a majority voting block for the whole county. And we are a bastion of blue, democratically speaking, like you, in a pretty purply state. And about four years ago our state legislature was taken over by Republicans in both the House and the Senate and that was the first time that happened in like a hundred years. And that changed the dynamic for cities dramatically in North Carolina. So a lot of what I have to do is manage our situation on a state level. So our legislature adjourned at four in the morning, Wednesday morning this week which is why I'm able to relax with you finally here in Portland because they're not busy doing no good. Which has been a little bit of a problem. I woke up at six in the morning on Tuesday morning to hear that a bill had come out of conference committee and it had a list of city preemptions in it which would do all kinds of things like preempt all cities in North Carolina from regulating short-term rentals, preempt all cities in North Carolina from preventing discriminatory rental practices. It would prevent all cities in North Carolina from imposing certain wage requirements for city employees. So anyway, we got that taken care of by Tuesday night. But that has been an ongoing challenge for cities to manage themselves in the environment, the political environment, if you will that doesn't appreciate the function of cities. And the function of cities these days is really to provide an economic engine for a region. So this slide shows you that when some of the partners we will work with in order to accomplish positive things. So here I just, I don't know if everyone can see this very well. There's a little bit of light here but maybe you can. There you go. So, you know, the things that make Asheville great are probably similar to the things that make Portland great. You have a beautiful downtown. You have a vibrancy. I've noticed you have quite an intergenerational population. You've got young folks and older folks. We do too. We're known as a retirement destination but statistically we just did a study and realized we have more millennials moving to Asheville than we do retirees just by a hair. So we're balanced in that regard. There's our city building again right there and there's our boring county building right there. And this is, you can't see it but our art museum is right over here. Well, and this is part of it too right there. One of the things that's made Asheville great today is because we were broke for most of the 1900s. And I'll explain that. Asheville is one of the only cities I've heard in the nation. I don't know if it's true but I'll go with it because it's such a good story. That didn't default on its depression era debt and we paid it off in 1976. Yes. They had a bond burning. You know, it was very, I mean this is before I lived there. But anyway. So, as a result though what that meant is our downtown didn't experience urban renewal like a lot of other downtowns because we were too broke to do anything. So all these old buildings sat there and I can show you I just gave my state of the city address on Thursday and before I started that I showed everyone an image of downtown Asheville from 30 years ago right on the other side of this corner and the old historic buildings there for us old is like 1915 or so. That would be an old building. They were boarded up and windows missing and billboards in the downtown and that was 30 years ago. It was a very different place. But we didn't see those old buildings get torn down and the sort of horrible stuff that you saw in the 60s and 70s. I'm sorry if anyone here has an affiliation with that but not as quite an attractive building. And now we've seen this resurgence in the downtown and people have taken these older buildings just like here in Portland. So we were lucky in that regard. In the crash, the Depression era crash the city lost all of its money because it was held by a bank that was apparently doing, I don't know what they were doing but whatever it was it was illegal and the mayor was on the board of that bank at that time and the mayor committed suicide by jumping to his death so it was a bad time but we've come a long way. You've got to think about that stuff when you're mayor. That's serious. So this is just an example of some of our older neighborhoods. This is in West Asheville. We have a big long corridor called the Haywood Road Corridor and it's lined with these sort of one and two story buildings. And this is all here in our River Arts District and I'm going to talk more about that today. And then over here it looks like this is more of West Asheville and this is just some newer housing that we're seeing in Asheville. And I know you all have a big interest in historic preservation. That is an issue in your community as it is in ours and this is a map of Asheville just sort of giving you an idea of where our historic districts exist. We have historic districts, historic classified for zoning purposes. We have one called Montford. We have another called Albemarle Park. And if you're doing work in those districts you'll have to go to the Historic Resource Commission for approval for that work. Now our downtown has lots of historic buildings but it is not a historic district regulated through the Historic Resource Commission. Projects in the downtown would go to the Planning and Zoning Commission. And I just wanted to give you a sense that we share that similarity with you and this is just a slide showing you all these different historic areas and whether or not they're also in a historic zoning district. Okay, this is just a slide, the key me to tell you about our practical challenges. So in North Carolina, just like every community you're going to be faced with the issues about planning for the future and am I pro-growth or not pro-growth or am I pro-development or not pro-development or what do I want to have to say about development. That is a very important issue for a community but for community leaders we need to make sure that we have an ability to provide everyone with the basic services they need so police, fire, pick up your trash, recycling, that sort of thing and then provide an opportunity to go beyond that. So what we were facing in Asheville and this is true in many other communities especially all across the nation and especially with the recession was that we were finding that there was a rising cost to providing services which is true for everyone because you've got to pay employees and healthcare costs are rising. Just to provide basic services the cost was rising and it was out of sync with the rise in revenue. In North Carolina cities rely on property taxes primarily those are held locally and some sales tax for every dollar of sales tax collected in Asheville every dollar of sales tax collected Asheville sees more than or less than four cents of that dollar. So we like you experience the pressure of supporting a regional economy for western North Carolina something like 40% of everyone who comes to work every day in Buncombe County where Asheville is doesn't live there so they're coming in to work and then I mentioned the almost 10 million tourists a year and that creates a burden and you're experiencing that too it creates an economic burden. We have more 911 calls per capita than most cities right just because we have more people there and it costs money to provide emergency services so you know you're just going to see an additional cost and that's shouldered by because of the taxing structure by the residents they're paying property taxes and it's paid somewhat by visitors but we only get less than four cents for every dollar sales cut collected so that's not a big direct benefit and then there's fees fees for services well those are going to be paid again by people who are residents doing business in Asheville so we looked at that structure and we said how can we create a more robust economy that results in a net gain basically to the city coffers so we can afford to provide all the things people want they want their streets repaved more often they want sidewalks new sidewalks built they want existing sidewalks repaired they want us to install green greenways they want us to build out parks a new you know basketball court surface in the community center or a new roof how do we create a long-term sustainable plan for economic growth we do it by investing in ourselves so we created a plan to invest in areas of the city where we would see the greatest return on investment so and quite literally for a city in North Carolina that's going to be seen in property taxes so if you're about to see what we did but that was the impetus for designing a structure that would benefit the community in the sense that it would provide a greater quality of life and a greater place by investing in these different investments you're going to see but would also create a plan to help us be sustained fiscally okay but how does it work how do you do it you do I just come down from on high and say I am the smartest person in this room and I will tell all of you what we need to do no that's not going to work in Asheville and that's not going to work in Portland there is nothing you do in Asheville without beginning with community vision so this little diagram shows you you start with step number one and that's citizen engagement and visioning and I think you all do this here quite a bit as well in our case it is the city that facilitates the opportunity for a community visioning process so the next step then is strategic planning and what I like to say about that is the city brings the expertise it may have the area experts we may need to hire consultants that have done this in other places and have more experience with it but we'll bring them in to help create a plan that harnesses the community vision and then three we have to remember I showed you all of our partner slides we have to engage our partners we have to collaborate to realize the plan so here is a picture of the river arts district and I'm going to show you a diagram so the river arts district here in blue and then notice over here the east of the riverway so this is kind of the heart of downtown downtown is over here here is the big river that goes through Asheville here is the horrible highway that was shoved through here million years ago that we have to deal with and our river arts district even as recently as the 1980s just an industrial area had railroad tracks of course down there like a lot of river districts other communities had already really started redeveloping the river districts we were a little late to the game although I always say because we were late we missed some bad ideas so it's not all bad but what started to happen is the artist's movement so as we saw industry leave these spaces we saw artists move in I always say artists are like good bacteria you know like you need like they come in and they just make a place bloom you know and I don't even know exactly how it works but you know the artist may be thinking I need this big space and it's really cheap so I'll go there but then they start creating this environment that's just fantastic so that's what happened and we said you know what we need to we need to focus on this area this is you want to talk about an area where we could see great potential and could really help be a place that people can enjoy they can go down there and ride their bike they can walk their dog they can hang out with their kids they can ride their bike you all have all these bike riders all over here so do we but also prepare a platform for people to invest because we had big vacant spaces and we had old buildings that were beautiful but needed lots of love so how do we do that well we begin by the visioning process engaging the community what is it that you want to see in your community again you're not going to see the city council or the city government come down from on high and say we know exactly what should go down here we're not going to do that we're going to come to the community and say come and show us what you're concerned about the artists are concerned about preserving a place for them they want to make sure that they don't get gentrified right out of the river arts district and they want to make sure they can still be there community members want to feel like it's accessible to them this is the east of the river way visioning this is a flyer for that we got some federal grant money to help pay for the facilitation of this visioning process and we in Asheville have an African American community that's about 13% of the population of Asheville which is lower than the African American population throughout the state of North Carolina which is more in the 20s percentile but this was adjacent to an area that had seen some urban renewal in some historically African American neighborhoods and so it was very important that those voices be heard so you'll see here on this flyer the names of some public housing neighborhoods that we have near there Lee Walker Southside Hillcrest as well as the river arts district South French Broad is a main street down there and then we can is another organization that's interested in what's happening in that area so first you got to feed everybody and that's key come together and talk about what it is you're wanting and this is just another slide showing you all the different communities that were engaged in this process and here you're seeing literally let's get the maps on the wall let's look at the properties let's look at what's going on there and I'm interested in this and again we will help facilitate this conversation by bringing in subject area experts who might know the right questions to ask or point out some of the challenges as a lay person you might not know about there's a lot of engineering for example there might be stormwater components there are road realignment issues there's going to be a lot happening and then here you're seeing a group of people who make up the river redevelopment commission and I'm sure you all have a board system boards and commission system like that but again when I talked about partnerships and collaboration that is so vital so the river redevelopment commission is a commission that really kind of is the vetter of all these plans but doesn't come to city council right away and they are appointed by the city by the county and there are people on that commission who might be landowners in the river arts district there's going to be landscape architects who sit on this commission so you'll have some subject area experts you'll have some political appointments you'll have utility our major utility company Duke Energy had an appointee there because you are going to run into utility issues no matter what but it's very important you will also have an artist of course on this commission so it's very important that you have voices that are connected to all these different parts of your community that serve as a facilitator to help this process because it's got to be a grassroots process that you have to see a lot of buy-in and then these are our staff members who are providing the subject area expertise and let me just say this you have a very different dynamic here in Portland where you're able to have a referendum issue with this signature of 1500 voters not in North Carolina never going to happen especially with the state legislature it's never going to happen but we in Asheville have been lucky to enjoy quite a bit of stability in our administration we like to have really exciting elections and there's lots of colorful speeches and you know we had a guy one time that ran for city council that biked all over downtown wearing nothing but a thong so we like to make it colorful I'm not kidding you so we definitely like that to be you know a colorful process but as mayor and we North Carolina doesn't have mayor strong cities they are run by city managers like Portland I and my council have to really authorize our city staff to be able to carry out these plans and if we didn't have that structural support the plans wouldn't happen they wouldn't go anywhere so our staff understand how they function in this community process and this visioning process and what their role is but they also know that we are going to stand behind them in carrying out this plan once it is created once it is blessed once it is solidified and they do and we are very careful not to undermine them as they go through that process and that's very key in creating a process that can actually net results so this is an image of the river arts district you know this is a plan now has come together we have the community visioning process and you'll see here the plan I mean it's hard to tell looking at it but it includes multimodal transportation you use this term up here it's a very hot term it includes all the elements that you would want in a river realignment we went from nothing but in a road realignment it went nothing but a road that didn't have sidewalks it didn't have parking it didn't have a storm water system it didn't have a greenway it didn't have lighting proper lighting so now this plan includes you know it's realigning the road actually moving it closer to the river in an area that is prone to flooding because you can put roads and parks and parking in an area that will flood but you can't put buildings there so we're trying to make more available land for building elsewhere and it includes parking and bike lanes and sidewalks and of course roundabouts you don't have any good plan that doesn't include several roundabouts and that's true and at the same time tries to be sensitive to communities that did experience urban renewal but bringing them connectivity but even in a town as small as ours you can see where there's communities and areas that are sort of isolated and cut off and this helps to create connectivity and also will result in an opportunity to see great economic investment so remember that fiscal component I talked about so New Belgium brewery out of Fort Collins, Colorado picked Asheville's River Arts District they came to us and said can we have a Brownsfield site do you know what those are? we said we have got those and they said we want a Brownsfield site on the water there you go so they have decided to build their east coast brewery right down in the heart of this district and they said we also want all of our employees to bike to work that sounds good to us so we were going to work in partnership with them to create in their space there took over a 20 acre site that was an old cattle yard and then on the other side of the river we already have a developer who wants to do a $50 million development that will create apartments and some retail space in a site that was a steel company that had just vacated the site so that's the kind of thing that we're trying to look at are you giving me a time? are you looking at me on a time? okay so I'm going to speed it up this is just we're just showing you how we also tried to leverage city assets PSNC Gas Company gave us this old building and here's the design for and it's right in the heart of this corridor so we'd be able to stop there, go to the bathroom, get a map maybe check out a bike this is a view of the realignment from above to a greenway right here and then this is the network I talked about how many different groups have to get involved with a project like this to make it a success we you will see there at the top of the list you start with the citizens of Asheville right there and then you see all these different groups that had to be involved in it and as a result of us really having our act together we decided to give us millions of dollars and this is this is me standing next to the Secretary of Transportation Anthony Fox as he's making an announcement to award us 14 million dollars for this project which will total about 50 million dollars when it's all said and done and the state even gave us about 8 million dollars and this is just another slide showing you again this Livingston Street Complete Streets project we as a city have adopted a Complete Streets policy and this is an area near there where we're beginning again the visioning process again harnessing federal money to help do that and and do another project over there this is just another visual of the River Arts District and the River Link which is our non-profit who got in there years ago and said the French Broad River doesn't smell good you can't swim in it it's polluted and we need to start cleaning it up and it now today lots of people are hanging out in there and it smells just fine and but they're also one of the partners in this so in the end I bring you back to this about how to grow strategically through a citizen engagement process and then I love this final slide this is the LaZoom Bus Tour in Asheville if you ever come to Asheville you can do this and they have their nun here who I see once a day outside my firm doors but it comes with this quote from Dolly Parton find out who you are and do it on purpose I love that that's all about your community and what's unique to you distill it down and do it on purpose do it strategically she might have said it that way probably so it's like that it's my wrap up so I don't know if we're taking questions or if we have time I can take a couple questions you have a guess oh there's mics yeah what policy initiatives if any has Asheville taken to preserve affordable studio space for artists in your arts district that's a good question so we we have an affordable housing problem period just like you do ours is incredibly intense we have no available housing for rent apartments or whatever the case may be at the federally defined affordable level or the workforce level and we have less than 1% availability on the market rate so we have incredible pressure so we do not have a program that is designed specifically for artists yet you know for example I went to Nashville and they have gotten their housing authority to build housing that is specifically aimed at artists we do not have a similar program to that but we do have we have had to really beef up our affordable housing initiatives as a city so we've had this year we put 1.25 million dollars in our budget for grant making to developers that are building affordable housing as it's federally defined and there's a way that's done and we have one fantastic organization called Mountain Housing Opportunities which has a good track record of building affordable housing and they have taken an old in well an old hotel down on Depot Street and I showed you a picture of that and they're converting it to efficiencies very small affordable apartments that could potentially be leased by artists for the maker space yes and we don't have a program the question is about actual studio space for artists and we don't have a program for that and again with the legal constraints of North Carolina cities and what they're able to do I'm not certain whether we would be allowed to do that but we might be able to help in other ways that that could help facilitate that we haven't quite gotten to that crisis yet because right now it's still affordable for artists down there but I think that challenge will be ahead of us in your discussion you mentioned African-Americans is a minority population but you didn't say anything about immigration I'm curious as to whether there's a concentration of immigrants and how you're dealing with that question as a part of your thinking and strategic planning I wouldn't say that immigration is a burning issue in Asheville yet we do have an immigrant population but it's Lithuanian and I know you all have quite a diverse immigrant population we don't quite have that in Asheville yet so that hasn't presented itself so much as a challenge you know our challenge when I mentioned the African-American population in Asheville what's interesting about our African-American population is that 18% of our African-American population lives in public housing or is on Section 8 vouchers in Asheville and statewide only 3% of the African-American population lives in public housing or is on Section 8 vouchers we have a disproportionately poor African-American community which also makes it very difficult for them to have a voice and so one of my initiatives and I didn't talk about this today as mayor has been to tackle the redevelopment of our public housing we didn't do that when Hope 6 grants were being made by the federal government many years ago our public housing has pretty much stayed what it was when it was originally built and it has created pockets of poverty throughout our city I was in Asheville this summer and it's fantastic and I was wondering if Asheville has a similar problem to Portland which is that we're the largest city in the state and a lot of the state issues people who need resources do congregate here as we're a place that can offer them services does Asheville have a similar issue in that it has a disproportionate share of provision of resources to people in need it does you know we're not the biggest city in the state but we're the biggest city in western North Carolina so we do operate as a regional hub and you saw on the map it's about two hours to any place of a significant size we you know again cities in North Carolina are very different in that they do not provide the social services but the counties do and what we have seen is that Asheville is a very popular destination for travelers and travelers are those who sort of voluntarily allow themselves to be homeless for various reasons and hang out in the you know the downtown and panhandle or whatever the case may be so we have a lot of tension around that issue with local business owners and people who say you know I don't want people panhandling outside my business and I don't you know what what can be done about this issue you're looking you're getting closer you're going to like yank you're going to can you join me in thanking Esther thank you I think we're going to go run around make sure the microphone make sure that's off Esther okay thanks everybody you know it's funny I'm so glad that Esther pointed out that we were running really late because it was like a little throw down challenge okay we're getting back on schedule then so now we're only six minutes late okay can I invite up my friends and colleagues for part two Dick Beringer, Ryan Wallace Greg Kessich and Jeff Levine are going to join me on stage and we're going to start talking a little bit and if there are things that have come up because of things that were said in our conversation if there's something really burning we can still ask questions about Asheville so come on up guys so here we go on with the show I'm going to introduce these guys really really quickly and I'm going to start all the way over to the left Ryan Wallace is a professor here at the University of Southern Maine he's the director of the Maine Center for Business and Economic Research CBER Jeff Levine is our city's director of planning and urban development Dick Beringer is a professor emeritus here at the USM Muskie School of Public Service and Mr. Greg Kessich is an editor for the Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram and the idea on this portion so our plan in bringing someone like Mayor Mannheimer here was to let us all take a deep breath and step back a little bit from the city that we love and hear from someone who lives someplace else and gives us a slightly different perspective back up a little bit realize we're not in this alone I am so struck by the similarities between Portland and Asheville it's pretty stunning and it was actually really sweet when we were on the phone she said, and we have this really interesting growing craft brewing industry like, oh you do, do you so anyway, yeah a little brew fest off we're gonna have to have with Asheville so that was the point in having her come and have us realize that we are not in this alone and that there are some really amazing things happening in cities all over the world frankly but in the United States practices and policies and programs that are being put into really progressive, interesting cities in terms of urban development and I really want to encourage all of us to get online and start investigating because we can bring that information to all of the conversations we're having in the city so now I wanted to invite these four gentlemen who from their own area of expertise have been thinking about these issues quite a bit and I wanted them to share with you what they're seeing as professionals in this field watching these issues and to share with you what they think are the two or three main key important issues points that are need to be talked about and thought about and I'm going to start with Professor Beringer you pick up that mic if you want to stop and smell the roses you can thank you he's not going to Jennifer was a former student of mine and one of the things I've learned about really really good students is that they never go away it's true it's true well I'm delighted to be here especially with so distinguished a panel and Jennifer's presence I'm really struck by Mayor Manheimer and if she and Mark don't have anything to do for the next month we're having a mayoral election here in Portland with all respects to Mike I think Mayor Manheimer would do really well and with all respect to Glenn Cummings general Patrick Moynihan who many of you who are of age will remember was a United States senator for a long time before which he was a scholar of urban affairs before which he was a bartender in the New York bar that is farther on he was once asked what makes a great city and he said oh that's easy you start a university and you wait 200 years so Glenn has got 160 to go of course he was thinking of places like Edinburgh and Paris London and Cambridge it used to take that long we're very fortunate here in that we've got a wonderful educational establishment in this city there are three things that I would ask you to take away today one is that this city is now in an extraordinary time of dynamic development change growth and those things come and go in 1960 I had the the modest fortune to be stationed in Portland aboard a coast guard cutter down at the state pier and the very first day I came aboard I had been in New Bedford which was a very tough town and I came aboard spent the afternoon just equating myself with the ship we were headed for the Arctic and the captain said we're going to be here for three weeks took me into his cabin he said what do you do evenings and I said well I like to go out just walk around town and learn it and he said do yourself a favor don't go out stay aboard we'll leave here in three weeks this is a very tough town and he wasn't kidding what we now love is commercial trade in the exchange neighborhood was a dump really really run down in a tough place it was suffering from the way all port cities in New England suffered at that time from the collapse of the New England textile industry and the failure of the port itself it was a very tough time and ten years later my wife and I were moved to Maine permanently we looked at houses in Portland I looked at one building on exchange street lower exchange street that was the sale for $20,000 and it recently sold for $2.5 million so had I been wiser I wouldn't be on this stage today so I want you to understand that these things are cyclical and that the most important thing is to take advantage of the dynamism and energy that's going on in this city to make it sustainable don't expect that just because it's here it is going to stay permanently secondly policy really makes a difference let me just tell you this is pretty esoteric but from the late 1960s through the middle 1980s there was a very energetic federal program in support of building middle-class housing largely rental all across the country and between 1970 and 1985 Maine built around 50,000 new units of rental housing largely in this region 50,000 the result was that in the 1980s there were 35,000 new young people under 35 moved into this region 35,000 new people all of that ended when the Reagan administration stopped federal support for that kind of construction and in the 1990s in migration was negative so it went from being very positive because of the availability of housing to negative because of the lack of availability of housing that is the single biggest policy issue confronting this city in my opinion the third thing I would leave you with is that one of my teachers several decades ago did a fabulous set of studies of sustainable communities this was back before sustainability was popular what he was trying to do was to find out among urban civic communities religious communities, monastic communities corporate communities what made them last and he came to the conclusion of a man named Lenny Cottrell by the way sociologist at the University of Indiana that what mattered most was something that he called community competence that is the ability this is what Mayor Manheim was talking about and that is the ability of a community to identify the issues that face the collective not personally but what are the challenges to the community as a whole the ability to articulate those to establish goals and priorities for meeting them and to organize to implement a program to address them not every community is capable of doing that I spent a long time in Augusta 20 years in Augusta and one of the things I noticed was that the delegation from a rustic invariably came down every year to Augusta with an agenda that crossed political boundaries regardless of republican or democrat or independent they all had three or four things that they knew were necessary to move a rustic county ahead and they still do that to this day and the opposite end of the spectrum was Washington County which is the poorest county in New England and to this day is unable to identify a program to move that community ahead community competence really really matters Thank you, Dick, Ryan Thanks, Jen and Dick, I'm not as polished a speaker as Dick, I need slides and I'm also a regional economist so I tend to show a lot of data points but I just wanted to say thanks for having me here, it was great to hear the story of Asheville, I've been down there it's a beautiful place and yes, there are a lot of similarities I think to Asheville to Portland but Portland's also different in several ways so I just wanted to offer a few observations from more of a macro regional perspective on Portland's context within the state, the region and some of the a few key data points that might inform some of the conversations that will be had today and the ongoing conversations and really to echo what Dick talked about Portland is sort of not only a regional hub but a hub of the state it's an economic engine of the state the other point Portland growth in Portland is not necessarily exceptional to Portland growth is happening in cities all across the country all over the world in New England with the transformation from manufacturing based economies to these more knowledge and service based economies people are moving to cities and that's putting pressure on cities but certainly there are impacts that residents that you as residents are feeling in the cities and having these dialogues to address those is certainly important so just to elaborate a little bit on these points the Portland thinking about Portland in the context of a region you really can't speak about Portland without viewing it within the context of a region because economic regions don't adhere to political boundaries while Portland is the economic hub of the broader metropolitan area that region the Portland city region comprises about half of the state's output so half of the state's gross domestic product yet only about 39% of the state's population live in Portland so while folks in the north and the tension between the north and the southern part of the state might take that the fact of the matter is that a majority of economic activity is centered right here in Portland Portland is a geographic Portland's geographic location is important as a gateway to southern New England and to other markets especially when we look at some of the port developments at the port that have happened over the last couple of years with Ameskip and access to northern European markets growth in Portland and the Portland region is again non-exceptional if we look at in comparison with other New England regions it's pretty much right in the middle so these are just a list of all the metropolitan city regions in New England and from 2001 to 2014 the Portland MSA has increased by about 7% and those are real dollars you'll see Asheville just below similar growth experience in terms of gross output and that's actually below the national city region average which is about 9.5% so again it's not we're not seeing these out of control exceptional growth but we do have a couple key data points one the big thing that everybody recognizes and same thing that's happening in Asheville is the challenge of housing so the median housing is well above the state average that has certainly changed pretty significantly over the last 10 to 12 years although we're still the housing values haven't necessarily recovered to the pre-recession peaks we also have somewhat of a dense population within Portland about 34,000 people per square mile which relative to some of the other cities in New England is a little bit lower but that density is sort of what leads to some of those housing pressures we also have one of the key points that has been a result of the growth that we've experienced is a higher income per capita in Portland relative to some of these other regions of course New England which is situated with the Boston metropolitan area which has a big influence on that we know the growth isn't necessarily due to population growth in the city although we have seen some upticks in the last few years an upward trend in the growth by and large population this is the story in Maine in New England is that population is not necessarily growing but what we have seen an uptick in is visitors coming to Portland and so the percentage of sales the growth in retail sales restaurant lodging and this is taxable sales so this doesn't necessarily include things such as Airbnb sales and things like that growth in restaurant lodging has gone up by about 40% since 2004 so a lot of those pressures are from the tourists developments that have happened down on the waterfront Portland's a place people want to be so they're coming here the result is a higher cost of living in the city so relative to some of these other regions within New England we're not necessarily as high however even compared to Asheville North Carolina for instance and this is relative to the nation so the nation is relative to 100 so cost of living is about 16.5% higher in Portland than the nation but the big cost of living challenge is in the area of housing so this is something that we recognize we know and that's all I really had here so thank you Ryan Jeff thanks very much it's really helpful to have some data going into the conversation there's a piece of data there that I would add onto a little bit the density per square mile in Portland of about 3,000 people is a little misleading in that a lot of that land is preserved open space a lot of it is out by the highway if you look at the peninsula which is what many people think of as Portland we're much higher than that we're over 10,000 people per square mile which is comparable with Cambridge, Somerville New York so there are a lot of people on little space and that's a good thing from an perspective but it does create challenges in terms of people thinking through how it's going to happen I want to start off by saying I'm not from Portland I'm one of the people that didn't raise their hands at the beginning what I try to do as a relative newcomer is listen but also to provide some information about what other places that are struggling with these kinds of issues are doing in terms of best practices and so I think that's been a learning process for me and hopefully I've provided some information as well as a planner one of the things we think about when we think about growth is there's a almost everyone who went to graduate school and planning at some point saw a chart on the wall that had the three E's and it's a triangle with economy on one side the environment on another side and equity on the third side and there's a lot of different variants on this there's people who tried to make it into a prism and did all sorts of crazy things and I'm sure many people got tenure writing exposing on different ways of doing this but this is the basic triangle of development and growth how do you balance these three things economic growth, environmental protection and equity and you know that's a very open into question but it's really the paradigm that we try to think about when we think about growth and change and how do we get to that answer through analysis but also through community engagement and I think as you know community engagement is a big part of Portland I will say to some extent I hear that people think it's unusual or it's more than other places every place dealing with this level of growth and change is having this level of engagement and it's a healthy thing and it's part of what we do as cities and it's part of what we do as city planners I think the engagement in some ways is the easy part it's the hard part is how to move that debate forward you have engagement, you have input sometimes there's a magical solution that everyone coalesces on and those are great moments most of the time you go through the process and you say well there isn't an easy consensus on this so what do we do as a community and I think that's the real challenge with Portland how do we resolve the fact that there are a lot of people with very legitimate views that just don't agree with each other all the time and if I had the specific answer like Dick I'd probably not be up here tonight but I do try to think about this and try to figure out how to help the policy makers in the city resolve those issues one of the things I want to say about growth and I think Alan Kunahol mentioned it first if you don't like gentrification consider the alternative the disinvestment model I think most communities that have disinvestment are in a far worse place than we are the challenge is how to take all this investment and really try to channel it in a way that also accomplishes community goals and again if there was one bright answer to that it would be easy but I think that's something we're having a good debate about as a community what I will say about the changes in Portland there's a I disagree a little bit with some of the folks who say all these communities are dealing with the same thing to some extent that's true but what's happening in Portland is I think more than just what's happening in a lot of other urban areas people are moving to the cities businesses are moving to the cities artists as an economic engine are being discovered nationwide but there's something more happening in Portland and it's really great and it's part of why I decided that I wanted to work in this community it's a real change of the positioning nationally of this city and I think it's partially because of the internet that people are able to work more remotely and work for companies out of New York or Boston and bring that value to Portland I think it's partially the city's partial luck and partial wisdom to have control of its own transportation system we own our own jet port that's not true everywhere we don't have to ask a port authority for permission to do things at the airport the city controls its own airport and that's an airport that gets you to New York faster than it takes to get from JFK to downtown Manhattan that's pretty amazing not every city has a one hour flight to New York and as an aside most places don't need bike racks at the airport Portland does people bike to the airport in Portland the ocean gateway terminal and the IMT having control over those waterfront infrastructure pieces is really important similarly having a healthy transit system having a good road system having good interstates that function very well on a national scale those are lucky things to have because they connect us to the rest of the world they connect us to New England so there's more going on in Portland than just people discovering cities I think the growth isn't necessarily going to continue but that repositioning I think is permanent I think that's really exciting but it's also resulting in a lot of stress in the community and I think our goal is to try to help people through that and help understand the position of Portland well preserving what's also great about it what made it in that position in the first place thank you Jeff Greg what's going on at the paper okay thanks good thing about going last is other people have already said some of the things I was going to say I guess I should have made that conference call but I wanted to talk a little bit about the political culture in Portland that has an effect on a lot of the things that Dick was talking about in terms of having a plan to move forward and yes it's true people really love Portland and people want to come here and that's a good thing and if you look at Portland compared to a lot of other cities we have a lot of room to grow there's a lot of surface parking lots on the peninsula that could easily be buildings or sites for buildings there's places off the peninsula that could handle a lot more density and a much more urban environment people who can't afford to live on the what are becoming overcrowded very expensive neighborhoods on the peninsula might like a nice urban life out of Forest Avenue but there are conflicts with all of these ideas and unlike Asheville eventually the mayor doesn't just get to decide we have a lot of open places for people to participate and I just want to talk briefly about I think first of all I'm the editorial page editor so I read every single letter to the editor and I know a lot of the rhetoric I can almost write all the letters to the editor and there I think are three big events that get brought up all the time that are very important to understand when you're navigating these waters the first is Union Station 1965 Union Station beautiful old granite castle on St. John Street was torn down because people were not riding trains anymore they were driving cars and it was replaced with a one-story strip mall with a big parking lot and it's a slap in the face every time you walk down St. John Street or drive down St. John Street because it's not really a walking street and this was I think a really important event it led to the historic preservation movement in downtown they had a lot of impacts over the years a lot of other buildings have been saved because of the consciousness that was raised by Union Station I went back and looked at the editorials to see what the person who sits in my seat said back then and it was kind of what I was expecting there was not a lot of foresight it was recognizing that nobody rode trains anymore just to maintain and that was progress and so I think it's important to remember that we can't see that far ahead but this is a really big event the second one I want to talk about is the 1987 waterfront referendum and just like now it was a period of some very explosive growth a lot of the downtown office buildings were built there was a condo project built on the waterfront on a wharf there was another one in the works and a citizen referendum was started to put a moratorium on any kind of waterfront development and require the city to develop waterfront zoning and again when I look back it's the same arguments we're having this time this election and some of the people are actually the same you know it's and the argument is we have to preserve this it wasn't a calculation of how much waterfront property is needed to sustain an industry of this size it was just a gut feeling that we want this this is part of who we are as a city and we don't trust the city council to handle it correctly and so that is a big event and that is carried on in a lot of people's minds so and then I want to go about 20 years later in like 2007 we had the main state peer event and this was there was the city council sent out two requests for there weren't requests for proposals it was before you Jeff but do you remember what it was there was two competing designs to build a large hotel and and it's office building complex on a publicly owned state peer that was a beautiful I mean a city owned peer there was a lot of access to the waterfront and if anybody from around that time remembers the debate that I heard was about which design is better I didn't hear a lot of people saying we shouldn't build anything at all and the city's position was that we've let the peer to fall apart so much that we can't afford to give it the repair work it needed without doing this kind of big development and the world's financial markets were evaporating 2007 into 2008 and neither one got built and there was a lot of finger pointing a lot of anger if you remember the last mayoral election the big argument was who lost main state peer why can't we say yes there were 15 candidates and 15 of them were for economic development who have lost the main state peer today it looks like maybe it wasn't such a bad thing we kept the peer, we have the access there's a couple of businesses that are going in down there lobster processing and packaging and there's possibility that it could be this ocean cluster incubator site and I think from this vantage point it looks pretty good maybe we didn't need another office building right in the water but so I guess I think the things in common that those big three events have is there is a sense that we can't trust city hall that the planning process isn't inclusive enough they don't listen to everybody and that we have to sometimes we have to take things into our own hands and the problem with that is you can't really listen to everybody you can listen to people and then you can still disagree with them and what we don't have is a good method of resolving our differences when we disagree after the process is over I mean when I saw the pictures of that planning process in Asheville I think probably everybody here has been to that here we put our yellow stickies on things you get the report and sometimes you don't agree with the result but in Portland we have this idea that it's not over until we say it's over and that's how a lot of these things play out so in terms of how that translates into a big vision that's I think a real challenge that Portland has to come to terms with because not everybody's going to be on board thank you I do want to allow for the audience I'm just going to ask a question first and it actually stems right off of what Greg was saying but I'm going to it's for everybody but I think I'm going to ask Dick to start this is about listening to Mayor Manheimer talk about the extensive process that they used and as Greg said you know it sounded really great on paper and I know that I have participated in similar conversations right here in this city as your student running at one of the Bayside charrettes back in the day and again this is stemming off of what Greg just said but we do community engagement in Portland don't we and why is it so hard to put it into a big vision that we can all get behind well first of all thank you Jennifer and I want to thank the Portland Society for Architecture and Creative Portland for pulling us together and my fondest hope for the day is that this kind of deliberative enterprise will continue if you want to write a check we could do it just about every week you have to speak to Glenn and he says the checkbook except did you notice how clear he was he didn't have the checkbook first of all Greg talked about the political culture of Maine and a singular element of the political culture of Maine is an antipathy toward planning period Mainers are not disposed to plan I learned that I was director of the state planning office for quite some time and we tried time and time again to get people to do that kind of collaboration all over the state and sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't it only worked when there was an alignment of the executive generally worked best when there's an alignment of federal policy state executive authority and really talented people who are supported by the executive authority and there is a persistence over time the original Bayside plan was done now well over a dozen years ago by Alex Eggerman and friends there were a whole series of Bayside charrettes and we haven't heard a thing about them in a number of years it's very interesting in fact if Asheville is doing it well it's doing it because there is a mayor who's committed to it who has a supportive staff who get backed up by the mayor and the council and seen to it that it persists through time it can't be episodic because then people realize that well this is an episodic thing I recently chaired the India street neighborhood planning effort we made extraordinary efforts the city staff made extraordinary efforts to reach out to the entire neighborhood it's a small neighborhood there were only 300 buildings down there and several hundred people and lo and behold once we came up with what I thought was a really serious extremely creative plan people came out of the woodwork because their ox was going might be good, might possibly be good without really understanding what the hell the plan was all about and what it contained even showed up to oppose it so I think it takes a I mentioned recently by the way I asked the developer how he was doing on a specific project and he said well it was going real well the city put out an RFP we responded, they approved it the planning board approved it the staff approved it and all of a sudden the city council started intervening that can't happen where that is the case in fact planning does not work and developers will be frustrated what one needs to do is to make it possible for developers to do what they do and that is to minimize the risk for investors and carry out policy and policy can't keep changing if you want them to be able to do that on behalf of society so if we're going to have success at taking advantage of this incredible dynamism there's got to be a more persistent consistent effort at developing what is the vision, what do we really want to see development for how are we going to get there and organize all of those constituencies that the mayor alluded to on behalf of it so when the naysayers stand up there is a unity of voice and support does anybody want to add to dick, chef it's hard to follow that one, that was great the I would say I think it's not quite as dire as dick is saying in that I do feel that the council does support city staff almost all the time and it's their prerogative not to and I've always appreciated that it's always been cordial in terms of doing the rounds and doing the planning that we need to do we have a lot of simmering burners in the city and only limited resources to do them so we do try to cycle through the neighborhoods the industry plan I've made a decision that until we finish that plan it's really hard to start another plan because our resources are and we need to make sure we can do that properly we're finishing that plan up now and going to East Bayside which is really our next neighborhood planning effort and it doesn't happen often enough I agree with dick we have streets that need paving and other demands on the city that doesn't mean we're not interested in doing these processes and it doesn't mean we don't think about a plan that may be a little old but it is a process and if you're going to do it right and you're going to engage the community it's going to take time and effort so it's one thing to sit down and write a plan it would take a week to sit down and write a plan for East Bayside but it would have absolutely no legitimacy and I want to make sure that if the things we do enjoy support I think the challenge that's been mentioned a few times is how do you get that engagement get input but also end up making decisions and that's that piece that's hard that's really hard and I will say I worked in communities that can't get past that last piece and can't get out of their own way and I think Portland has the benefit of not being one of those communities we can get over that last little piece but it does take time and it takes effort and we're going to keep working at it I'll keep asking questions but I want to give somebody else a chance Jess thank you Jen I want to go back to something that Greg mentioned and this idea of community competency because it feels like to me going back to this idea of if we lose if one side loses whatever the issue might be we then go and say well we're going to change the rules we're going to sue or we're going to organize and I'm certainly for organizing but I feel like we've lost this idea of an agreement about what the process is right? I don't think we all are going to agree on every decision that everybody makes but it feels like we've lost the agreement that the process is the way to do it does that make sense so there's no sort of social contract among residents that we believe in the process whatever comes out at the end because we've got all these other things whether it's legal remedies or referenda or things like that because that's what's happening right? so when people don't disagree they don't agree with the result they then try to change that result which does all the things that you just mentioned so given that historical perspective and all the things that you've worked on I wonder if you could talk about that and how we begin to cultivate intentionally this agreement that we might not all agree with what the result is but we have to agree on what the process is because if not we're in really big trouble or we're just going to have more lawsuits so I think it's important to note that we're talking about a very few number of cases that actually end up in a referendum or a lawsuit for the most part development thuds along and there are challenges and things don't get built quite exactly the way they were designed but it isn't like there's nothing being built but I feel like every time there's a big one of these controversies we draw like a imaginal line behind us to prevent it from happening again the historic preservation is one the waterfront zoning is another kind there's a lot of community process that happens before plans get to the planning board and sometimes these lines all intersect I agree with Jess I think the thread is always hanging over just hanging there in the background for any substantial development in this city we're not going to bother participating because in the end we can stick it to them because they're developers and they're exclusively for the bucks which is not my experience and is not the case in fact first let me say I think that this city is very blessed with its planning board very very diligent talented people and the planning staff they understaffed frankly given the amount of pressure that's on them right now it's a wonder that they're able to do what they do but I believe that this regular resort to referendum is in fact an indication of the failure of community competence and until we do something about that structurally it's going to remain there and I think that a fourth lesson that I would urge people to take away is that leadership really matters it really really matters that the mayor of Mannheim have changed to be clear about what they want to do and how they're going to do it and where they're going to take us and Mayor Mannheim clearly is devoted to this community engagement model which he embraces I would urge every person here to ask the candidates for mayor what are you going to do about this do you want to ask a question as we discuss community engagement I'm reminded of the fact that Maine in general and Portland in particular have a small space politically and a single voice carries quite loudly and as I'm thinking about the face of change in this community I noticed that we're a remarkably homogenous room listening to a panel of upper middle class white guys and you all have a tremendous amount to add to the conversation but we need to hear other voices as well and I wonder how we can engage them when they don't necessarily have a natural voice in this discussion already would anyone like to tackle that Jen? they're handing me the microphone I mean you're absolutely right and I think that is a challenge generally in the planning process is the people who have the bandwidth and the the assertiveness and the time to get involved tend to be a subset of the overall population you know we go out we have community meetings only the people who can hire a babysitter or you know are retired or are young can generally come to those meetings and it's a struggle we have and it's a struggle for the planning profession in general so we try technology which obviously doesn't reach many low income people who may not have access to technology what we have been trying to do more of with some successes literally just going to the neighborhood and going to an area to get input from them as we do the space side process and one of the goals we've been working on is how do we engage the Kennedy Park neighborhood that traditionally isn't involved in meetings because even if they know they're happening they have two jobs and they don't have time to get to them so I don't have an answer I do acknowledge the issue and it is something we're trying to figure out what to do about but I'd be overstating it if I said I had an instant solution for it it's absolutely true I'm just going to jump in and say that I've had this conversation with several people recently about how do we get different voices to the table and I will say instead of one thing that we can easily do is be really intentional in our own day-to-day to take on the responsibility ourselves to reach out to one of our neighbors who might be representing one of those communities and invite them to something like this the work that Creative Portland has done in the immigrant community is we have learned that it really is something you have to intentionally invite someone to come to something like this because in a lot of cases people are culturally coming from a totally different set of expectations around engagement and talking and sharing and so I'd like to just challenge each and every one of us who are obviously informed, engaged citizens to reach out to somebody in your neighborhood who might not be a middle class educated white guy and invite them to anything like this I'm going to keep going back and forth so Andy I'd like to shift a little bit into the question of organic development versus plan development East Bayside which you mentioned might be an example of organic development which has been really quite interesting and dynamic similarly the Oldport was organic and after the crash of Congress Street in many ways its reinvention has been somewhat dynamic Roger Gilmore and the designation as the arts district and the money spent on the park and the museum and the purchase building were significant but still it it was not so affected by planning which was which was about working with the neighborhood stakeholders perhaps it's time for us to re-examine the planning process given the fact that it has not given us the intentional results that we had hoped for Bayside for instance the argument over the waterfront development that's happening now suggests to me anyway that perhaps we need to rethink what is the current wisdom about how the planning process should be done and invent a new process that doesn't simply say we bring people together, put up post-it notes hire a consultant reach out to the stakeholders who often are the economic stakeholders rather than necessarily the community stakeholders certainly when I've been on task force I'm always astonished at how many economic interests are there as opposed to community interests so I'm sort of challenging the whole assumption that that planning in Portland is doing business the way it should and perhaps that's in part at the root of our problems where we get the lawsuits that Jess is talking about even though we are going with the prescribed process we're not getting the results so the question in there is organic organic development versus plan development Andy as much as I love you I think you're totally off base there you go the riches of being an artist yes the mistake is that you posing one against the other planning in self is a process if you want it to be organic and that means simply let anybody do what they want then you're going to have to face the fact that people can do some very dumb things and they often do do dumb things and planning has to do in my mind with two things one saying to it that the development decisions are informed by the range of issues and problematic considerations that might be involved when you're developing a place like Bayside which is going to go under water one way or another whether we like it or not which has got certain capacities and certain shortcomings it also has to do with engaging people in a democratic society which is the more important thing and that is knowing that people are going to have access to vetoes if you're going to eliminate as much risk as possible in moving toward what appear to be communal values and goals you want to have as many people on board as you possibly can and that's really what planning is all about it's eliminating risk on the one side and gaining the advantage of consensus and popular support on the other it's not a question of okay we're going to have a Soviet style plan that's going to say housings here, commercials here etc etc it's really a general effort to eliminate the downside risks and to maximize community support for the investors both public and private investors who are going to help us grow in ways that are acceptable would you like to go? I've heard the H word housing used a fair amount this morning but I've yet to hear anything very specific about how to make progress in this area why is it so difficult for Portland to help promote affordable housing do any of you see grounds for optimism here if so if yes, why not? Great question I seem to keep getting handed this microphone I can't give it back quick enough I think you're right I think that it's a key issue we did a study earlier this year to look at that housing market and try to get our head around it a little bit your question is really timely there's a package of regulatory changes that are going to go to the council this month about housing issues so if anyone's interested the timing is really good to have your voice heard about what if anything the city should do proactively on housing we've done some things that have been partially successful I don't think government's going to solve the problem but we certainly can try to address it and we've been lucky in terms of having access to federal resources that we've tried to deploy we have a housing trust that we try to use efficiently is there more we could do? yes and I'd say please get involved and stay tuned it's not just Portland it's cities all over the country and it's really tied to wealth inequality when we talk about affordable housing we think of it as just a housing problem but it's a resource problem people can't afford to pay the rents it's not going to be solved I think by the planning department I will say that one of the interesting things I heard that surprised me recently was created Portland's in the process of attracting people to this region because we need people and I was talking to a young woman who was just recruited by LLB from Portland Oregon and she was saying that she as a professional can't afford to live in Portland so while there's clearly an economic for people in a certain economic class there's an issue but it seems to be getting even tighter with even median incomes just to add to that would you like to ask a question? I agree that a planning process is needed and I think that the planning process is actually working fairly well I think there is a step that's being neglected though you go through this visioning process you start coming up with solutions you bring in the experts but what gets dropped is that the vision is not then communicated to the community very well I think there needs to be greater outreach to all of the communities about what the vision is because I think if you can get community buy-in with the vision then even the outcome even the process is not going to be so contentious if you keep going back to what your goal is but if you don't communicate and I know I've worked as an editor for community newspaper I live out on Peaks Island people do feel disconnected from the decisions that the city is making and they are not in accord because they don't know what the vision is and that failure to communicate it doesn't have to be expensive and it can be a lot of fun actually but I think people do actually have a common vision but it's not being communicated that's great that's my suggestion I was actually wondering so Dick you use the term increasing community competence I did want to address that because that suggests that there is community incompetence I think the community is there's a point where and this is what Andy said that at a point the stakeholders are brought in and community stakeholders are not included in that group and that's where you get the disconnect I don't think that the community is incompetent I just don't think they've been included or feel included and I guess that's more important whether they've been included or not and there's got to be an active effort to engage the community and that probably means going out and if you have to recruit volunteers or if you have to go to community organizations or hold potlucks or a block party or something but you need to get the communities engaged so I'm always trying to look for the fix that's going to fix these things and what I'm hopeful today is that all of you are learning new things that you can be really practically applying to things and so all this sounds really good what the heck can we do about it I think it's really important to acknowledge what Dick said Jeff has his hands full and we can sit here and say we want a better process we want a more thorough process it's important to note that Asheville did get 14 million dollars from the federal government and so what can you do you can ask your counselors to invest more money in community planning efforts and because just expecting Jeff and his staff to do more with the same amount of resources whether or not you think they could be more efficient or not is beside the point it's not going to happen if you want a more thorough process I'm just advocating we as citizens need to say that's a priority for us and we need to let our city leaders know that can I ask a question thanks, first I want to introduce myself my name is Nancy Martin I moved to Portland a month ago welcome to Portland thrilled to be here and I mention this because I think it's relevant to the discussion this morning my husband and I decided we were living in the DC area and we told our bosses to Portland main because it's awesome and our bosses agreed to let us work remotely so far it's been working out we're really thrilled to be here but I just mentioned that because it's an example of this it's perfect I'll be talking to you later happy to be a case study or what have you and it's working out really well we have a young family and we're very thrilled to be here with our young children I spend a bit of time in my day job thinking about how cities overseas can adapt to a changing climate and so my question really is just a question not a position understanding the issues that Portland's dealing with I think that what I assume others would agree that what makes Portland so attractive and wonderful also is what makes it rather vulnerable is this something that is acknowledged in the planning process is it something that's acknowledged among the citizens is it something that deserves more attention it's a great question thank you Jeff did anybody have their car flooded in the whole fruit parking lot that's right well just quickly because I think it's a great point it is something that we're trying to emphasize as we do planning going forward it's a tough one because cities are strapped financially as the mayor said earlier and we're not on top of that and by the way you need to fix global warming and sea level rise without strong federal or state assistance that's going to be really hard I agree it's a real challenge and cities like Portland are especially vulnerable we're going to do our best but without some assistance from those who can make a difference on a huge scale it's going to be really hard because do we close a school to build a levy that's those are tough decisions okay and just because again in honor of Mayor Mannheim are pointing out how anxious some of us get about time I'm going to allow the last two questions and then we'll stop for lunch I'd like to respond to Mr. Bairinger briefly we certainly need growth in Maine and intelligence sustainable growth I'm looking at figures from Moody's Investors Services and they say that population growth in Portland is only about 3% since the year 2000 Moody's says that we've had a 2.1% increase in valuation of properties in Portland in the year 2015 but that follows six years 2008 through 2014 when the tech space contracted here total decline of 8.9% so 8.9% down and then up 2.1% so we're hopefully we're at the beginning stages of one of Portland's boom cycles and I would like to respond of Mr. Bairinger by indicating that he's right on point with the concept that the issue really here is community competence and I think it's fair to say that there are many people here perhaps and in the community that take real issue with some of the recent decisions of the planning board and the city council in Portland and really question that competence in the vernacular that criticism is that Portland city council Portland planning board has been hijacked by developers and I hate to be the bad guy here or devil's advocate gadfly but I think that needs to be addressed and thrown out on the table because I think when people talk on street corners in Portland that gets mentioned and I think that's a great idea. I don't know a single developer that would say that though. Everybody says it's the other guy you always hear that developers get everything they want the developers say if I could build anywhere else than Portland I would it's I don't think it's as simple as the city has given the keys to the developers. The city has given the keys and the commenter and it's been that way for quite some time it's really very regrettable that developers have that image because it compromises the city and I think it's the developers problem. I think they need to do something about it truly. Those of us who agree with the comment can stand up because there's an obligation to take the lead in correcting that image. How would they do that? Just to put you on the spot. By doing good stuff. I'm serious. No. I mean just doing building and creating spaces that people love and having the developer get credit for the ugly stuff that's gone up in the past seven or eight years and people recognize it and they attribute that to the developers. In fact it's the investors and what they were looking for but I think the developers have got to push back and say this city is special. People here care about what it looks like and want it to look better than it has in recent years. Steve, you get to have the final comment slash question. Okay, thank you. Some of these other things. I guess my question is that why are plans only a starting point? I think that's really a lot of the frustration that we're talking about here. Someone texted me and said who's here today? And I said the usual suspects. I think that's very much true and we all go to these meetings and we put up our stickers and say what we want and we come up with rules and then as soon as a developer comes in it's change this, change this, change this. And in other cities they play by the rules. They say this is what we're going to do. They have a process and then they do it. An example would be Boston's North End. Smaller buildings are going to be over here. The open space is going to be over here. The high rises are here. In Portland I know over the past 15 years I've been involved with the development of West Bayside and I'll share two examples. You have supposed to be a transportation oriented pedestrian friendly neighborhood. One of the first major developments was Whole Foods with oversized parking spaces for SUVs. One story and I shopped there. I shopped there a lot. I eat dinner there from time to time. I have no problem with Whole Foods being there but as soon as the proposal came along there were people and people on boards and on committees who were just saying yeah this is congruent with exactly the opposite of what we've written. A more recent example would be Midtown. There was a group of people I wasn't on it who established height standards for the neighborhood and first thing that Midtown came along and did was try to reverse those height standards. Why is a plan that's developed with neighborhood input and approved by the city only a starting point for developers. Give it to the economist. Well I should have first mentioned that I'm also a new resident of Portland having moved up in January so I don't have the experience and the knowledge behind a lot of the historical things that have happened and I'm still learning so this has been a great opportunity for me. I'm also sort of trained as a planner through graduate school and my understanding plans were they are a process as Dick mentioned and just talked about but so they're an ongoing process but they're shaped by community input community and how they want the community to move forward and this is supposed to set the direction for how development takes place to set a pathway predictability and guidelines for how developers and investors can then invest in the community according to how the community visions or how the community vision takes shape. I can't speak exactly to certain developments within Portland related to West Bayside but essentially I would put a lot of the onus back on the community to there's been some conversations today about once the plans take shape I'm losing my train of thought here sorry I'm trying to think about where I'm going I just got back from Alaska I took the red eye back last night I was there last week so I'm losing starting to lose my mind the plan is supposed to set the vision and the community needs to take responsibility for that vision and you can't turn around and object to everything that pops up if that's what you've agreed on you talked about social contracts that's what's supposed to shape you know take that plan and put it into action and to continue that process so I think I totally agree Ryan but I think that's exactly Steve's point is that I think there are people who feel like there has been a process and there has been a plan and then the rule somehow everybody feels like the rules are somehow changing after the handshake happened and so I don't know Jeff if you want to address that aspect of it sorry Jeff and then we're going to have something to eat hopefully so I think it's I think the challenge with the planning process is you do your best when you develop a plan to factor in what the market is in a particular part of the city what kind of development can an area handle economically and what kind of development would you like to see as a community and it's sort of like when you try to price a new item that someone's invented when someone invented the first personal computer that you think it could sell for I don't really know so you try to do your best and then when you when land is out there that's privately owned and developers come in they say well this is what we think this land can support economically and I think we do use the plans as our starting point I think we often find that what we wanted to see on a particular piece of land may not be something there's financing for there's an interest in people feel there's a market for and I think we are often in a situation where we try to balance those two things what we try to do as planners is make the plan as economically realistic as possible so that doesn't happen very often I think in India Street we spent a lot of time thinking about that maybe maybe more than we have in the past but it is a challenge and I think just continued neighborhood involvement as zoning changes are proposed making sure people understand A the argument for them to see why they disagree with them and making a decision at the council level because ultimately the city council are the policy makers for the city and things change over time so it's hard to say here's a vision that was established 20 years ago and you still need to adhere to it having said that I think it's a valid point and I think it's something that we struggle with all the time is what happens when people want to vary from a plan Dick would you like to add the last word let me add this Napoleon famously remarked that no battle plan survives the contact with the first contact with the enemy and that's true of plans in general that you can plan out the next 5 or 10 years but if some opportunity comes along that is even contradictory to the plan you've got to at least give it consideration as to whether or not in fact the world has brought you something that really needs to be looked at very seriously and there need to be mechanisms for doing that I'm a great admirer of what the city of Portland Oregon has done its city-wide planning is founded upon neighborhood plans and those neighborhood plans are done extremely carefully so that there is constituency behind them and the neighborhood council whose job it is to see to it that the city abides to extend possible with that plan and the city's plan builds off of those neighborhood plans and I think there's been talk time and again about doing that in this city but it's never really taken hold city-wide I think the city we're doing itself a great favor to do that. Finally for those of you who really love cities and I take it it's everybody in the room in the past year I've read a book that I just find one of the most encouraging, helpful and insightful books about city development that I've ever read it's called Ed Glazer one of Pat Moynihan's successes at Harvard called The Triumph of the City how the greatest invention makes us richer, smarter greener, healthier and happier and how to get there it's a wonderful book about the dynamics of city growth and development and it speaks I think directly to this city of Portland today. I think it's available on paper back now and if anybody wants I can loan you my copy Can you repeat the title, Dick? Sure. His argument is that the city is one of the great inventions of human kind of all time and that it's not appreciated for that especially by the Congress of the United States today. I can tell you that. The Triumph of the City right? Pardon? The Triumph of the City the subtitle is how the greatest invention how our greatest invention makes us richer smarter greener, healthier and happier The Triumph of the City Edward Glazer G-L-A-E-S-E-R Google it Okay can everybody these guys It's that long fellow books these guys took their Saturday morning to come and talk to us could you please join me in thanking them?