Is local business being targeted by city of Portland?

From local activist Jay York:

Jay York with his dog Tucker on Congress Street.

Jay York with his dog Tucker on Congress Street.

“I’ve been reading the Franklin Street Feasibility Study 2 and found something very disturbing.

The group (that goes by many different names) that is making the plans for the redesign of Franklin Street has recommended “taking” the parking lot of an old established Bayside business.

Earle W. Noyes & Sons would lose their office employee and customer parking lot along the east side of their business.

In 1971, along the newly constructed Franklin Arterial, the company built a 50,000 sf building with it’s offices at 127 Oxford Street. They had bought the end of the then discontinued Oxford Street for use as a 20 car parking lot.

It’s ironic the City is now threatening to “take” this lot because it was offered to Lester Noyes by the City of Portland as an incentive to relocate there.

If this isn’t bad enough, it looks like this same study calls for “taking” more land from the Noyes business on the west side of their property to accommodate widening Lancaster Street. It also suggests Pearl Street being extended to Marginal Way right through what’s now a NAPA store.

And guess who owns that property? Earle W. Noyes & Sons.

Over the last couple of years the Noyes business has been involved with the City’s plan to raise the height of Somerset Street to accommodate the Midtown development. The City’s plan has put the Noyes’ Kennebec Street storage facility at risk of being flooded.

Is the City of Portland targeting Earle W. Noyes & Sons? Is this harassment via the City’s planning process? Shouldn’t the City be working to keep businesses in Portland?”

 

Chris Shorr

About Chris Shorr

Chris is a sixth generation Portlander who loves all things Maine. He has worked with mentally ill and marginalized adults at a Portland non-profit, on a lobster boat in Casco Bay, at several high-end Portland restaurants, and at a local meat packing plant. He also ran for Portland City Council in 2013, wrote a weekly column in the now defunct Portland Daily Sun, and currently writes a weekly column in The Portland Phoenix.