Portland’s Warren Avenue, which stretches from the traffic hell-mouth of Morrill’s Corner to one of the less charming gateways into Westbrook, is not a scenic drive. It’s not easy for any single property to stand out as an eyesore in this light-industrial commercial zone, but 135 Warren Ave. keeps finding a way.
The building at this address isn’t particularly unsightly — an almost quaint, brown bungalow dating from the Great Depression. It’s the land in front of it, which is, quite literally, a dump.
Glancing at this mess while driving by, you might surmise that a second house on the property had recently imploded. There’s a small mountain of demolition debris, including windows, doors, appliances and furniture. Off to the side sits an old boat of questionable seaworthiness.
The grimy sign out front identifies the place as the headquarters of Kleen Oil Ko. City tax records identify the owner as Charles V. Tanner III (the president of Kleen Oil, according to the Better Business Bureau). But the business that most recently occupied the site was A Little Shop of Everything, a furniture store run by Dottie and John Seavey, who leased the property from Tanner.
According to city inspection records, the problems here date back to at least 2009, when the Seaveys were filing permits to operate their business out of the bungalow. That’s when city officials got a tip that someone was burning trash and furniture in the yard. When the inspectors showed up to investigate, they discovered a veritable junkyard filled with debris (burnt and otherwise), derelict vehicles, and items the Seaveys were selling — an outdoor showroom of sorts that had sprawled onto neighboring properties. Inside the house, piles of stuff in the basement nearly reached the floor joists and were crowded next to the boiler.
The Seaveys worked with the city over the next several months to haul away the junk and get the place up to code. By May of 2010, the property was all cleaned up. Inspection reports note that the vehicles had been hauled away, retail items were placed in storage containers, and the basement was no longer an overstuffed tinderbox.
But this era of tidiness was short-lived. When inspectors returned in July of 2011, after a small grass fire was reported in the woods nearby, they found that the property had again become a Little Shop of Horrors, with junk all over the place. John Seavey told the inspectors his business hadn’t sold anything from inside the house during the past year — all sales now took place outside.
Enter Bank of America, which began the process of foreclosing on the property last year. Tanner pins the blame for this dump on the Seaveys. He said they stopped paying rent and shifted their attention to their new retail outlet on the Roosevelt Trail in Windham. Dottie Seavey, who said she’s recently been hospitalized, told me she and her husband gave up on the Warren Avenue location when they realized Tanner wasn’t paying the mortgage and the bank was preparing to foreclose.
Seavey said she finds the current condition of the place absolutely deplorable and wishes the city would do more to clean it up — or at least put up a fence and a “No Dumping” sign. “People think it’s mine and I haven’t been there in forever,” she said. “If I wasn’t so sick, I would be right on top of it.”
The property is still a headache for the city. Since the bank took possession, inspectors have had a hard time contacting anyone at B of A to clean up the mess. The city was able to get Central Maine Power to disconnect the electricity to this potential inferno. And last February, city officials met with a contractor to discuss the scope of the cleanup work, but there’s no indication any arrangements have since been made to begin that Herculean task.
— Patrick Banks
