 Good evening. We're on the air once again with another edition of Patience on the News. Something a little different tonight. You know, we usually talk about politics, national politics, main politics, and often have a guest who's a politician. We've had many famous politicians, all of the politicians in Maine, except Susan Collins. She's never agreed to come on the show. Don't blame her. Maybe she doesn't like me. I don't know. We've had everybody else. So we even had former Senator Bill Cohen in the last few months. So we kind of stick to politics and public affairs. But we're going to talk about public affairs tonight in another sense. Our guest is Steve D'Amillo, who is the manager of D'Amillo's Restaurant, member of the iconic family that owns the iconic restaurant here in Portland. And welcome, Steve. Thank you. Great to be here. A lot of questions for Steve about the hospitality industry in Maine, why they can't find help, what's happening to restaurants, foodie Portland, Portland Waterfront, Portland politics, because Steve is one of the city's activist citizens who pays attention to what's going on. And so we want to talk to him about that. I might even ask him a few questions about his late father, who was really something. And started the restaurant and was a friend of mine. So Steve, welcome. The name of the, I give a title to these programs, and this is Portland, Waterfront, Past and Future of the Waterfront, and what's happening with the hospitality industry today. So you have many brothers and sisters, correct? I'm one of nine. One of nine. And where were you born? 1960. So in 1960, your father did not have this fancy restaurant. He did not. He had a little small place up on the hill. Up on Bunjoy Hill, on 4th Street. But he went into the Navy. I know he left high school, went into the Navy, was brought up on, as he used to tell me, Newbury Street, which was the Italian neighborhood, right? Correct. Were his parents Italian immigrants? They were. They both immigrated through Canada. Yeah. As did a lot of the Italians and settled in the city of Portland. A lot of men ended up in Rumford and Jay at the mills because they were stone masons. Right. But my people came right to Portland. To Portland. And when he got out of the Navy. Excuse me, Harold, Army. And he would not like it if you said Navy. Oh, okay. He was in the Army. He was a soldier. My two brothers that served in the Army also. Okay. So, he was a soldier and he came back home and he was apparently just naturally entrepreneurial. Wants to be in his own business. Yeah. He opened his first business when he was 13 years old, kind of a corner store. Sold candy, had a pinball machine in it. And he was looked after and befriended by several people in the neighborhood, including Harry Baker. So what do you attribute this kid who really, the work he did, which was hard work, was running his own businesses from the very beginning? Yeah. Well, he was one of sex and he grew up poor and he didn't want to be poor. And he knew, you know, he had plenty of intelligence. He was not book smart. Right. Did not read, did not go to school very long. But he knew that he didn't, he knew there was a better way. And he figured it out. He did figure it out. And you say he wasn't book smart. He didn't finish high school. But imagine, I have here something that you gave me some time ago, an article from Greater Portland Magazine, spring of 1985, 35 years ago, 36 years ago. And there's a feature piece about your dad. It was after he opened the floating restaurant, a big picture, the Tony DeMillo interview. And what really interested me, this is 1985. He said, in the summertime, we serve 13 or 1400 meals a day. And in the wintertime, when it's 600 a day with the busiest restaurant in the state of Maine, well, to create and run and successfully operate a restaurant that's the most successful in your state, you have to be very smart because you have a lot of things to think about. So this, he was gifted. He was gifted. Multi-tasker would be an understatement, but he also surrounded himself with great people. That was important to him? Yes, he was. And so now you're the manager, but you work and you're a team with many family members, right? Correct. You have five of the nine kids in my family work on the property. My brother-in-law runs the kitchen along with the chef. Long time kitchen employees, the chef and her husband have been there for 20-plus years. My kids work there. Hesonises and nephews working through college there. So it's a big family fair, but also long-time staff that stay with us because it's a fun place to work and we pay people well. This is truly a family business. And that's the other nice thing that your father created. He created not just a business, but a family business. He did. He was really proud of that. His sisters worked. My aunts worked the front desk for 60 years. My mother worked the front desk for many years after her final child went off to college. I remember your aunts and your mother being down there. Absolutely. They were a great presence. Yes. Your mother's still living. My mother is still living. She has dementia, but she still knows us, which is fun. We reminisce. So your father was the son of Italian immigrants. What was your mother's heritage? My mother's people came from PEI. From Prince Edward Island. Correct. Were they Scotch? They were Scotch. They were farmers. They were stoic, hard-working, nice people. Yes. All right. So now we talked a little bit about, Steve, about your family, but what about you? Do you know how to cook? I know how to cook. I spent, well, I started in 1968. Summer is washing pots and pans. I'm really good at washing pots and pans and dishes. And then my dad put me on, as a prep cook, and then a line cook for I cook, a broiler cook. I was in the kitchen until I graduated high school in 78, and I put a tie on and came out front. So when you walk into the kitchen, you know what's going on. I do. I can't do it like them, though. We have some really good people, talented people. And our menu has been up-scaled or uplifted over the years. Chef Bouchard has taken it to another level, and so, you know, I don't think I could work the saute station. I'll try, but I won't do a good job at it. So how's DeMillo's doing today? Well, we're doing good despite the pandemic. We had, you know, we were closed down for a couple of months, like everybody was, March of 2020. But then it came back. It came back pretty strong up until a year ago, you know, like last October, November, things, the numbers came up, the COVID numbers came up, cases came up in Maine, and people started hunkering down. But we've done well. The very stable workforce could use some more people. Just one of our good cooks just moved back with her family up to Orrington because she wanted to be with her family. And there's absolutely not one person applying for that job. So we've made do. The chef has altered the menu to accommodate the talent that she has. Can't just have that saute guy get all the orders on a ticket, so it's got to be spread out. It's kind of menu engineering. Well, we hear about restaurants, Portland, you know, famous foodie town, famous first restaurants. And what we hear is all the restaurants are having the same problem. They can't get help. But it sounds to me like the focus is in the kitchen. It is. I mean, that's the heart of the house. So, you know, a lot of our neighboring friends, a lot of successful restaurants in Portland are chef owner operated, a lot of friends, we're friendly with almost all of them. And so they're holding down the fort themselves in the kitchen and they create the cuisine and serve it. But they, you know, we need, we need ancillary staff. We need dishwashers. We need prep cooks. Not so skilled labor. But they get the minimum wage now. Is the minimum wage applicable in Portland? Well, the market, because of the staffing shortages, the market has driven the wages up tremendously. You know, we hire a dishwasher at 18 bucks an hour now, because you're not going to get one if you offer 17 or 16. Otherwise, nobody's going to come to work for you if you want them. And therefore our prices have stayed up. We had hoped to bring our prices back down, but we had to make money, keep the place going. So, at almost $20 an hour, a dishwashing, if they work 40 hours a week, that's 100 a week. And you can't get people. Correct. Why? That's a combination of things. People have, I think, found another way to make a living. Hospitality is not for everybody, but it is certainly a fun way to make a living. Hospitality positions allow you like a skier. I don't wait in line. I don't ski on a Saturday or Sunday. I ski during the week when there's no line. There's a lot of benefits to it. A lot of our staff, our students, they're at college, they might be at my main college about or SMCC or University of Maine, and they were able to work 20 hours a week, 25 hours a week, still make a good living, and have some flexibility in their life. So that's part of it. But what about servers? I don't quite understand. I read in the newspaper what was happening with tips and whether tips are included or $15. But what does a server make? Does a server make the minimum wage or do they have a different arrangement? In Maine, there's a tip credit is allowed, so they'll make half of the minimum wage plus tips, but they're the highest earners in the restaurant. Highest earners have any restaurant anywhere. I mean, if they make $608 an hour that we paid them, they're making $50 an hour when they combine it with their tips. So we don't feel sorry for the way it's done. So a server in a good restaurant and one of the good restaurants in Portland can make much more than $1,000 a week. Oh, yeah, by far. A couple of thousand a week. Correct. But a lot of them choose not to work that many hours. They like to travel. They like to have fun. So they can work a short amount of hours and make good money. One of the other challenges we had with bringing people back to work was the safety aspect of it. People were comfortable maybe working among others, unmasked. You can't really social distance in the kitchen right next to each other. And then of course the extra unemployment money has added to that staffing shortage. You don't know how many people will come back to work after. But the elimination of that extra unemployment money will come at a time where it's the end of the summer. There might have been some people that saved some money last year because they didn't do anything. And they took the summer off. So maybe they'll be back in the workforce. I talked to a fellow who's in the staffing business and he anticipates in the fall there'll be more people wanting to come back to work. I think he's right. You think he's right. Yeah. So what about business this summer as opposed to- Gangbusters. I mean the street is just crawling with people. I don't know an operator. I'm the chairman of the hospitality main organization. I don't know a member of ours in any part of Maine that is not breaking records this year. I talked to a big hotel operator. I have many hotels in Maine as well as other places in the country. And this was probably a month ago, month and a half ago, the end of June. And he said we'd never seen anything like it. He said people will come to our hotels on a weekend for instance. We could charge them anything they'd pay. He said it's just unbelievable. And then I drive down Commercial Street, people everywhere. Yeah. I often think I wonder what my dad would think of that because he's been gone 22 years. So he didn't really see that. Well Portland was not a tourist destination when father died. You are correct. Is it a big tourist destination? Oh it's huge, it's huge. You know the establishment of it being a foodie city, the Bon Appétit designation, the best place to live, all those things have helped. But the thing is when folks come here for a culinary experience, they get it. I mean I don't travel a whole lot but if I'm in Chicago or Boston or New York or Washington D.C. which I go every year for the Public Affairs Conference, I don't want for anything more than I've already got in Portland. It's all over the place. Now we're getting to the citizen involvement. You just triggered something with me. You said you go to Washington for a Public Affairs Conference. What kind of a public affairs? For the NRA. Yep. Restaurants, not rifles. Right. So we, well across the country, every state, restaurant association, I was a hospitality main, sends their representatives, their government affairs people, their chief people, anybody who's interested in participating in politics. We go and we visit the hill and we visit, we only have four visits. I'm sure when you're in California you've got a lot more visits to make. But we go, we visit all of our legislators and do it in a few years. So even our representatives that we know don't agree with what we're asking them to support. They're cordial, they're friendly, they're helpful, and... You like this? I do like this. My dad was always politically active, but I'd have to say my political mentor was Dick Groton. And Dick Groton coined the phrase, or I think he coined it, politics is not a spectator sport. Well I ought to explain. Dick Groton was the long time, was it main restaurant association? Correct. Long time executive director of the main restaurant association and a very well known person in the halls of power in Augusta. And a developer before that. And a great guy. Yeah. So you worked with Dick a lot and you learned stuff from him. I'd learned a lot from him. Yeah. In fact, you're a very active citizen in Portland. People know you and you're active. You ran to be elected to the Charter Commission in the city of Portland recently and you got a lot of votes. But you got a lot of votes. How many votes did you get? I got 1,848 first place votes. Now 1,848, there weren't many total number of people that voted in that election. You are correct. So you must have gotten more than a lot of other people. I was the second highest. The second highest in the state wide. In that city, in the at-large race. Which is city-wide. Correct. So you're the second largest. Yes. And are there people on that that did get elected to the commission that got fewer votes than you? Well, I know that Commissioner Washburn, when they applied ranked choice voting, he had 367 first place votes. First class votes. First place votes. Now she's on the commission and I'm not. You had 1,800 in some and she had 300 in some. She's on and you're off. That's ranked choice voting for you. So you don't like ranked choice voting? I don't. But I'm told that maybe the city applied the wrong metrics because there were four candidates for, excuse me, 10 candidates for four at large seats. So would I do it differently this time or next time? I certainly would. They ran a slate of candidates, which that's what you do with ranked choice voting. Run in the middle of normal people that are not, you did call me an activist, but I'm not an activist. We don't know these things. So now we know. So now as the. Well, I don't see any difference between activists and involved citizenship because even I don't agree with much of the democratic socialist position at all. I disagree with much of it. I don't think it's realistic, but they're active citizens. And in self government, democracy depends on citizens being active. I mean, I'm a Greek. I've read a lot about the ancient Greeks. And it was citizen participation. They were activists, those ancient Greeks. So we call everybody an activist. It gets a bad name. Some people are, you know, a charge into the capital with flags and guns to be activists. We don't agree with that. Before we leave the Charter Commission discussion, I just want to point out that the low voter turnout, which we knew was going to be a factor because it was in June. It's just traditionally it's not a good time to get voters out. But the conservative or the moderate voter did not come out. And the other side, the democratic socialists of Poland, they were very good at getting the vote out. And so I still say they're the vocal minority. John Q. Public, there's way more of them that just want their taxes to be lower. They want to manage their council form of government. They don't want a strong mayor to be ruling over all the department heads. But they need to come out this coming November. They need to come out and vote. I would say they need to come out. And no one is organized as well as the democratic socialists. And I think a little, if there's people that don't agree with their positions, those people need to organize as well. You know, messaging, of course we all know, is important. And these people, these democratic socialists had a message when it came to the Charter Commission. And that is that the council manager form of government, it was a product of racial bias. And there's something supported by the Klu Klux Klan. And that is absolutely untrue. It's just, it's a lie. It's not true. The fact is that the council manager form of government was a reform proposal. Good government people, League of Women Voters, were for the council form of government because they didn't like the corruption in the strong mayor strong mayor governments. So it was reformers, not Klu Klux Klaners, who came up with the council, manager form of government, and sold it in many places across the country. So unless you have better message, and I'm not talking about you personally, but unless those who don't agree with the democratic socialists and don't want them to control what's in the Charter and what kind of government Portland will have, the message has to be clearer. You are correct. Yeah. So let's talk about some of the other things. The waterfront, the whole issue in the waterfront over the years, once development pressures began, and really once your dad put his floating restaurant down there with a big parking area. How many acres of parking do you have? There's three acres there. And then there was four acres of water, but it was deemed to be belonging to the state. He was sold the acreage, the water acreage. Yeah, but he has to lease it from the state. Well, he didn't know that when he bought it. Oh, he didn't know that. The bank sold it to him as X number of acres on land and X number of acres of water. He didn't know. He was very friendly with that bank. He was. But yeah, so you have the marina, which occupies a lot of the water space, and very successful marina too. And you do boat sales. You have boat sales in someplace north of Portland? Sure. My youngest brother, Chris, has DeMillo's yacht sales, and he has offices in Maryland. He has a nice facility up in Freeport, Long Island, New York, Kittery. He's got the DeMillo entrepreneurial gene too. He's got it better than anybody, I think. He does really well. He's very smart, very astute, loves the challenge of business. So he's involved in boat sales up and down the Atlantic coast. Correct. He's the most successful savory yacht dealer on the East. And the country, I guess, because the Eastern seaboard is the market. Wow. Well, I didn't know that. So anyway, but you have the big marina there. You've been the big boat place. Now there's another alternative for big boats, but it's a longer walk to the restaurants. Well, the developers of the Portland East End. Yeah, it's what they call it. Portland Company? Yeah, the folks that are developing that, they're going to lease out space to restaurants. They're trying to create their own community. Residential restaurants, shops. So that's another destination. So it's nice to see this summer when you talk about the large yachts. Because their marketing was that if we build it, they will come and they will correct. Because we could only handle so many of them. And my brother manages that, the dockage at the D'Millo's. And he's at capacity, always was at capacity. But now there's just more of those mega yachts. And it's great to see. So this tension, back to this issue of tension between the working waterfront, so-called, on one hand, and the hospitality industry, restaurants, and hotels on the other hand, is there, you folks, talk back and forth. Sure, we're all friendly. Both sides are trying to look out for their own turf. So the lobstermen, or the harvesters, but it's mainly lobstermen that are involved in the discussions, they don't want to lose their birthing. They don't want a hotel or a restaurant to displace their workplace. And they have legitimate concerns that once an upland use or a restaurant gets located next to their lobster boat, then eventually they'll be talking about the stinky bait and the loud engines early in the morning and all that goes on. So I don't blame them, but there's room for everybody. And it really goes back to when my dad bought Longwater in 1978. And pretty much everything on the waterfront was either established businesses. You remember, Shirtliff was down there and Air Bishop. And there were still boons. Boons was there as a restaurant from the turn of the century. But most of the wharves were falling in disrepair. You had the pool family run and union wharf, which is really kind of the post-it child for a well-run marine wharf. But then you had Long Wharf, like my dad bought. And it was derelict. It was a burnt-out coal pier. So he developed it slowly, built the marina. He opened it in 79. And then he was going to build a restaurant in the parking lot. We had been diagonally across street 121 from 65 until 82. We moved over to the boat. That's a pizza place now, is it? It was. It was Angie's Pizza for a lot of years. Now it's Seabag's flagship store. Oh, Seabag's Store, yeah. So they just took it over, which was great people in that business too. So him developing Long Wharf probably wouldn't have been a problem. But it's Chandler's Wharf that was the lightning rod. And if you think back to the- Michael Liberty. You got it, Michael and David Cope, the living group. And all that were involved, they developed that. It was Central Wharf at the time. They changed it for marketing reasons. From pier's edge to pier's edge, building and structures and it didn't allow any- Scared people. It did scare people and it got them going. I mean, there was a moratorium on development. Right, we had a referendum. Correct, back in the early 80s. So I understand where they're coming from, but there's room for everybody and I think we've proven that. Well, and I think that over the last couple of decades, that's worked out pretty well. There is kind of a synthesis of the two things. I know that at the Pierce-Atwood Law Firm building, which is on a pier next to the Portland Fish Pier, but you walk out, you come out the front door of the Pierce-Atwood Law Firm and there's a dozen lobster boats lined up there. That's where they birth. I think it's worked out for them and I don't think it bothers Pierce-Atwood in the least. You are correct there, cohabitating just fine. Just fine. So I think that's where we arrived ultimately in Portland is a sharing. I think you're right. And I think, well, one of my friends that really has been more active in waterfront zoning than myself was Charlie Poole from Union Wharf. And he just always said, we need mixed use. So on his wharf, he needed upper floors to be able to put offices in. They pay for the infrastructure of the pier. So that that pier is a nice, solid pier now, but they couldn't have done it without some other uses. Correct. And the rents for the lobstermen have to stay reasonable. And that's the whole ballet that's being danced on those piers. Yeah, yeah. See, practical solutions, there are always practical solutions, but not everybody in the extremes is willing to look in the center where the practical solutions emerge. You're correct. And that was the last go around with waterfront zoning is that there was a threat of another moratorium. So the Batemans were going to develop a fisherman's wharf that they had a channel's wharf. They were going to develop a hotel there. And the working waterfront people came out of the woodwork and they threatened a moratorium. And our city manager got together with the representatives from the working waterfront people. Actually in Keith Lane's kitchen up on Monjoy Hill. And they had a- Is he a lobstermen? He is a lobstermen, a great guy on Custom House Wharf. So Willis Spear, John Bisonette, Keith Lane, all very active and a lot of other- Fishermen. Fishermen, yep. Yep, and they brokered a deal with the city manager that we'd halt all development for now and let's discuss it. Hence the city manager's waterfront working group of which I serve as do several of the lobstermen, peer owners, business people in the area. So it's a nice combination of all- People talk to each other. Correct. And try to work things out. In a civil manner. In a civil manner. Ah, you added that in a civil manner. Which is not always the case these days. No, it's too bad. Because as much as we are, appear to be adversaries, say property owners and lobstermen, when we'd get through with these meetings, we'd go out and have a beer afterwards. We're friends, we see each other socially. It's a nice group of people and like I said, they're just trying to protect their turf, their livelihood. Now the other change is hotels. I mean, I was talking to somebody the other day, I think I mentioned this to you earlier, that told me there are now, with the opening of the new hotels on Commercial Street, 3,000 rooms on the peninsula. And you can't get a room on a weekend here. It's craziness. There are 3,000 rooms and if you come up here from New York or whatever you want to, you can't get one. And they get New York prices. And they're getting New York prices and it pours over to other things. My wife works at a woman's dress store on Exchange Street, not far from the Press Hotel. The business they do is strongly tied to the Press Hotel. People come out of the hotel, they walk down the street, they go in, they like what they see. The tourist industry is just fueling Portland economically. Yeah, it's burgeoning. Where she works, I don't know what shop it is, but the beauty of the Oldport Exchange, or it was called the Oldport Exchange, but our area, now it's expanded down to Commercial Street, there are shops that are offering something that they can't, they're unique, they're unique items. They can't get them everywhere. That's exactly what happens to them. I said, where do the customers come from? Texas, California, Missouri, Chicago. Significant portion of their sales that are those people. And then they hear from those people, sometimes, can you send me this or can you send me that? Good for them. No, it's really unusual. People don't realize a lot of the people, because I'm old, I'm 85, so people don't realize in the 1960s. You walk down the Oldport, you had to be careful, it was a bad area. Sure was. You were worried. There might be a knife fight or something down there. It was not a place to hang out. It was not, the Iron Horsemen had their clubhouse up on 4th Street. Yes. Oh, my dad befriended them because he needed them to be on his side. He befriended everybody. Really? Tony DeMello was friendly with the guy that picked up the trash in the morning and the bank president. Yeah. He didn't truly like people, but he knew he needed everybody. Yeah. Well, I know he was friendly with the bank president because they knew the bank president. They had a fun time together. Yes. But yeah, it's just changed dramatically now. I went into the city hall one time. It was a big brouhaha over something at a city council meeting and there was a huge crowd of young people. Most of them, I'm guessing most of them didn't grow up around here, but they moved here and were happy they're here. And one guy stood up and he said, we gotta do something to get rid of these out of state developers. These people want to come in here and he says, buy our town. I knew he hadn't been around very long and I had this urge when he was finished to grab him by the ear, march him to the window and point out the window and say, you like this town? You say you like this town. Wouldn't be here unless people invested money in it. Just wouldn't be here. You're right, you're right. From that time, the villages became towns and towns became cities. It took people risking money, their own money to do this, but they don't think of that. They don't realize that and they want to stop things and had they stopped things in the 1960s in this town, it would be a far different place and much less attractive to the young man who made that speech. You are correct. And to take up one step further, I said I couldn't wait for my first waterfront working group with the city manager and my lobstermen friends and my first statement to them was because they were in a slump all during the pandemic. They weren't selling lobsters. They weren't selling lobsters because everything shut down. But one of their major complaints is not just providing dockage for their people in the business, for their industry, but it's traffic on commercial street. They don't like that they now have to wait to get from point A to point B in traffic. But I brought to their attention, gentlemen, I said, there's a correlation between you selling lobster in that traffic. You gotta have both. We laughed about it. I made my point. Yeah, but it seems to me a very good point that you sell a lot of lobster in your restaurant. Right, right. Probably as much as anybody in the state. You don't know. We don't know, but a lot. But a lot of the restaurants in the neighborhood sell lobster. But people come to a floating restaurant on the main sea coast, they think lobster. And every time you make a lobster sale, it's good for those lobstermen. Exactly, that's the point I was making. Yeah. I took you off task a little bit. You were talking about development. And I immediately thought of the Eastern Waterfront where we have that kind of a rapid expansion of development. A lot of office buildings down there. Boy, big time. Big time. Yep. And condos. And the developers of the four points mariner and then the upland buildings, it's all good. I mean, I happen to have a wife who disagrees with me on that. She does not like all that. She doesn't want all those big buildings. She drives through there. She said, it reminds me of Boston. It's good. It's progress. Well, there's a little difference between Portland and Boston and many other cities, not all cities. Portland is almost an island. It's a peninsula. And there's not a lot of space on that peninsula. It's the limited. So in terms of downtown Portland, it will never sprawl too much because there's no place to go. The only place to go now is West Commercial Street where the veterans building is being constructed now on the west side of the bridge. But otherwise, Portland is a very contained place. Seawater on three sides of Portland. So it's very contained. And the peninsula is no room for sprawl. The sprawl is being self Portland or Scarborough or Westbrook, but not in Portland. So Portland will never get too big. Can't. There's no room. But then it's not just the people that like Portland the way it used to be. My wife moved here in 77. It's not the same Portland or at least the downtown waterfront, isn't it? But we also have the islanders who have a legitimate concern about parking. That's true. That's a big issue for them. Yeah. And there's more people living on those islands. Than ever. Than ever. Yeah. They are dependent on the ferry and the parking garage next to the ferry. And is that parking garage, I guess, is full all the time? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're a long waiting list, but... Waiting list. There were surface lots that the city owned. And they've got one open right now for a daily pay, $15 a day, which is reasonable. But that'll be developed here eventually. The city's got some grand plans for a nice Portland park, a waterfront park down there by the... Down with the ferry terminal. Correct. The Nova Scotia ferry terminal. Correct. Yeah. They've got some great plans for down there to offer more public access to the water. But it is coming to the cost of parking for our islanders. It is. But overall, the amenities in this city, extraordinary for a city its size. They have very few places in America with the amenities that have been developed here in the last 40 years. Very few places in America that can match it in terms of lifestyle, amenities, and so forth. You know, for those who don't want it to be developed too much, you've got the fact that the peninsula is limited in space. There's not much room for much more development. Correct. And the climate. Fact of the matter is that climate always has and always will be a kind of governor on development. It'll never get too great because people don't like cold weather. No, I think you're right. But it is spreading a little bit. I mean, look at the news with Berman Morrow moving out all those jobs. And I haven't heard how many jobs are leaving, but that's going to be replaced by the Ru Institute with the collaboration with Northeastern University. So it's going to be replaced by many hundreds of students who do not live here now that come here to go to school. They're going to spend many, they're all graduate students and they're learning to be entrepreneurial. They're learning to develop new science and new businesses. I think it is, you know, it's replacing factory workers with jobs that some kid growing up that goes to Deering High School. Well, you went to Deering High School that has been confronted with the fact that unless you have your own business, you might end up working in Philadelphia. That kid's going to go to college and come back to Portland and work in a job that pays well. So I'm very excited about the Ru Institute and the Berman Morrow place. That site, Berman Morrow's site, as you cross the bridge with the back bay on one side and the Casco Bay on the other side. And that site is one of the best sites I've ever seen in any city. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's spectacular. And I didn't mean to speak bad about that. No, no. I love those folks and it's definitely bringing some new excitement. Oh, I think it's going to stimulate jobs. But there's the housing issue too. There is the housing issue and that's true. And there is a crisis at housing to the cost. So many people can't afford rents and so forth. But supply and demand always affects those things. So the supply is restricted and no matter what the city council does, unless the restriction and supply is alleviated, they can't fix it. You can pass laws, you can try to cap rents, you can do all those things. Just means fewer housing. The more you cap the rents, the fewer new housing units will be built. So, but you build enough of them. Now they're starting to work now on a high rise apartment house, the tallest in Maine in downtown. Well, those kinds of things alleviate the housing crisis because the more you build, the less price pressure there is in rents. I believe you're correct. And the folks that, they don't like that the workers have to go to Westbrook or Soco, which is that those are popular places to go now. Very popular. Yeah, because the price is right. The taxes are lower. I mean, let's say our property taxes are really high here in Portland. They are indeed. Yeah. And that's what's driving, another reason why it drives the rents up so high. Yes, yeah. No, there's no question about it. But in any event, the bottom line is that for politicians in Portland, for people on the council, people who want to be a mayor or whatever, that it gets funds from only one place. The money to pay for the things they want to do comes from people, from residents, property taxes, fees, that kind of thing. That's where all the money comes from. No development, no money. Simple. So the city is partners with people like you. You are their partner. The more success you have in your restaurant business, the higher value your property has, the more in taxes the city of Portland collects, the more it can spend. Pretty simple equation. So what worries you about Portland in the next 25 years? You may think the big concerns, I mean, we're doing well, but the things we have to be careful about? Oh, homelessness, unhoused, it's a big issue. So we've got people all around the city or the peninsula anyways that are in a place to live. I don't know the answers. I see a lot of people studying it. A lot of, you know, I watched the Preble Street organization do their best to feed people and to house people and to attend to their needs. You know, the Portland Free Clinic doing their work out there on the healthcare for the unhoused. But then there's the debate, where's the next homeless shelter? Not my neighborhood, it's not my neighborhood. Nobody wants it in the neighborhood. The popular one is the Riverside Street now, but then the city's now gonna put it on the ballot. Maybe there's a choice between smaller ones or the large one, which is not very, I don't think it was aptly cited, some do, or none of the above. So here's what some people would ask you, and I'll ask you on their behalf. You talked about difficulty in getting dishwashers in your restaurant. Joseph Brennan, who grew up in Portland and was for two terms, Governor of Maine, always said, as he went around in campaign, the best social program is a job. The best social program is a job. I had always appealed to me, I always thought, Joe's right about this, it's pretty simple, and he's absolutely right. He was right about a lot of things. So you're looking for dishwashers, and we're worried, you're talking about poor people who don't have a place to sleep, because they have no money to get a place to sleep. Why don't they come and wash dishes at DeMillo's? No, there's a fair amount of those folks that are suffering from mental illness, substance abuse, those are big, big factors in the homelessness issue. That's, you now put on the table a major part of the issue, which is mental health and addiction. And it is a mental health issue, and that's what I think, what we don't know what the solution is. When I was growing up into adulthood, mentally ill people were actually treated in mental hospitals. Now there was an idea that went around, that caught hold that this was cruel to put people in these institutions who were mentally ill when they could be treated with medicine. And so everybody went on the street, and some people can't function, and they don't take their medicine. And I don't know what the solution is, but you put your finger on the disconnect between you want people to work, and these people are on the street, and you said a lot of it is mental health and addiction. Yeah, I have, I don't have the answers, evidently nobody has the golden spike to fix the problem, but there's a lot of good people out there working towards it. And if you look, if you talk about workers and homeless or panhandlers, you know, both my brother, one of my brothers has offered, stopped and offered work to people. We've got some people from that offer. My brother-in-law has done it, but most people, I don't know, they either enjoy the cash or they can't deal with it mentally. But you do have some people that were down and out that you've given jobs to and they've come to work. Correct, and worked up the ladder, some of them. Really? Yeah, yeah. Because then it goes back to the minimum wage thing, like the minimum wage, minimum wage wasn't tended to someone to raise their family on. And it's an entry-level wage. Come to work as a dishwasher, work up to a prep cook, a lined cook. Run the kitchen someday. We'll train you. But now you can make 800 bucks a week washing dishes, so the times have changed. A dishwasher. And I don't think that's bad. The fact is that the more you pay people at the lower end, the more they can put back into the economy. So, my theory, because I don't own a restaurant, is if you pay them dishwashers $800 a week, they can afford to go to a restaurant and buy a meal, too. That does help the economy. It does help the economy, absolutely. So I think, well, let me ask you this. So your involvement in city politics and public affairs, you think about running for some office? Well, running for the charter commission was appealing to me because it was a defined role, a defined period of time, even though it was a little bit flexible as to how far out would go. But it was a defined role that I thought would be a great way to give back to my city. You mentioned Governor Brennan. Governor Brennan gave me that advice for 20 years ago, probably. He said, do not run for a council seat as a business person. Fortunately, the governor and I have had many visits over the years, and I still to this day, he visits, and I get some advice, but he said, you wanna serve people, go to Augusta. You're gonna do nothing but make enemies at the city council level as a business person and a high-profile business person. So now you have on the Portland City Council some people that I believe are moderates like, yeah, Spencer and Nick, they're getting off, and so the Democratic socialists were organized to get those seats. Correct. But those seats, and it's this year, I guess, it's in November, so it's an off year election. District one seat, given up by her name her name escapes me, but she's also from the Hill. Also a great, great moderate candidate. She's a moderate, yeah. She is, nice person, hard worker, thinks outside the box. Yeah. Sorry, I remember her name. So there is obviously in government a place for people in the middle that aren't on the extremes, but the problem is that in this city, for instance, we talked about the Democratic socialists being highly organized. There's no moderate organization. There's no organization of moderates. There are some of that are brewing. Okay. So stay tuned. Stay tuned. Okay. Belinda Ray, I'm sorry. Sorry, Belinda. Belinda Ray seat, district number one, Sponsored Tibidot two, and then there's two, excuse me, on that large seat, Nick Mavadonis' seat. Those three seats will be up for election in November. And their ranked choice voting will be applied to those races. And so if we don't want it to be just one group in power, other groups have to organize. Politics is not a spectator sport. Politics is a non-spectator sport. That's right. So all right, so we're not gonna see you running for mayor, that's for sure. Bad for business, I agree. Yeah, I think the governor hit the nail in the head too, but also, I mean, I've been working a lot of hours, long hours, all my life. I wanna have some fun. I've got a great family. I love my wife spending time with her. My kids work with us. So you have two grown children? Two grown children, yeah, 38 and 35. Boys. Steve Jr.'s 38, Chelsea is 35. They both work with us. They do. They both, they gave us three grandchildren that are just so much fun, and we're having a great time with them, but look at them, I mean, they're already eight, seven, and three, so before you know it, they'll be in high school and gone off to college, so I wanna catch some of that along the way. Yeah, all right, so you have a lot of things you wanna, you wanted to, do you have a boat? I share a boat with my family. A boat my dad had built in 1989, that's a Holland. Lobster? Lobster, yeah, it's a 38 Holland, and we love it. We really enjoy it. Well, your dad had me on that boat a few times. Yeah, I, I, I, Did he twist your arm and make you drink alcohol? No, he didn't. On two occasions, I can remember, I had somebody visiting from out of town, and I called him up and I said, Tony, I wanna show these people, Portland and the harbor and everything. And he says, bring them down, we'll take them out on the boat. Both times, he had a little spread on the boat. Nice. You know, we had a nice lunch and so forth. He was a great promoter of the city of Portland. Yeah, he was. A great promoter of the city of Portland. Do you, do you remember when, of course you do, because you were a young guy, but you remember when your father decided to take the risk on this ferry from Newport, Rhode Island, and bring it to Portland and everything. Sure did. Well, he must have had some sleepless nights because that's dicey stuff. Oh yeah, he stuck his neck out, but he made most of his decisions from his gut. He knew that, and he really didn't know, he hadn't traveled a whole lot at that point in his life, but he knew people were drawn to the water, and he literally was reading Boats and Harbors Magazine at our old restaurant across the street, thinking about the restaurant he'd built on the end of the pier, and then he saw this thing and he just, the light bulb went off. He just looked at it as a platform, a foundation. Common sense. So he had a lot of it. So, but he also had a lot at risk. He could have lost everything. Yeah. My mom used to tell a funny story about, he said to my mom one day, I'm thinking about, because he was established, he owned that whole block of buildings on the other side of Commercial Street, a successful business, real estate. He bought Long Wharf and he had built a mariner, and he said to my mother, I'm thinking about buying this ferry, 206 foot long retired car ferry, and kind of mapped it out a little bit for, and what do you think? And she said, I don't know, Tony, that's a little big of a risk. He says, too late, I already bought it. And that's the way he worked. Yeah, yeah. He never consulted us. You know, myself and my other family members, I shouldn't say. He was definitely driving the bus. It was his, he said, because I asked him one day when he came down the gangway and he kind of undid everything I had done that night. And I said, what does that mean when you say you're semi-retired? He said, as soon as I walked down that gangway, I'm the boss. He was the boss. He paid attention to everything, every detail. If you went into that restaurant and you saw your, and talked to your father, he would come to your table and talk to you. But his eyes were everywhere. I always said he had eyes in the back of his head. He knew what was going on. He would say, excuse me a second, and go speak to somebody. He'd say, don't do that or do this. He was something. One time, when I was managing partner of my law firm, we hired a new administrator to be the boss of our law firm. And the first day he came to work, I said, what are you doing tonight? Nothing. I said, you and your wife on us, go down to DeMillo's restaurant, order whatever you want, drinks, whatever, have a very good time on us, first day at work. Only require one thing. He said, what's that? I said, watch DeMillo. Learn from him. Learn from your master. DeMillo, I said, that's the way we want you to be here. So yeah, he was a remarkable guy. And I like it that you have a painting of your father in the entryway to DeMillo's restaurant, where he's looking at his eyes, and it's a way I remember him watching everything. And when you walk by it, you must think he's watching you. We used to, I used to tell my brother, Gene, he's looking at you through that office window. When some say he's looking at the cash register, but he also said, we live when conflict might arise in our family management of the restaurant. And he said, we live by the golden rule. I've got all the golden eye rule. It was great. Yeah, it was great. Your father was young when he died, how old was he? 66. 66. What he strikes. Smoked all the time. My mother said his feet didn't touch the floor in the morning, he had one going. He loved smoking cigarettes. Yeah, and it did a man. Oh, yeah. Whatever, he had a good time while he was here. Yeah, yeah. Well, Steve, thank you very much for coming here. We learned a lot from you tonight. And people will now come into your restaurant. You know most of the people in town, but maybe some people here say, I saw you on television and I'd come in to have a meal. So thanks very much for coming. My pleasure. Bye-bye. Thank you.