A Google search for the terms “Cape Elizabeth” and “dump” doesn’t bring up many links that aren’t related to the town transfer station (or the tragic accident that happened there last year), though my profile last March of a house on Ocean House Road shows up on page 3, and we wrote about a dump on Scott Dyer Road three years ago. You can now add a third to that ignoble list: 18 Longfellow Drive.
This house in the Elizabeth Park neighborhood has been vacant for the past seven years or so, according to sources familiar with the area. A recent visit convinced me they’re correct. The small wood-shingled dwelling with peeling burgundy trim is being slowly swallowed by its overgrown yard. The gutter around back looks like a container garden. Vines are trying to pick the lock on the back door. The mailbox has become a bird’s nest.
A peek in the windows through tattered curtains revealed a thoroughly trashed kitchen. On a counter I saw a snowshoe and a bottle of Bud. A densely packed jungle of junk is piled halfway to the rafters in the garage.
Town records list the owners as Michael and Trina Richards. My attempts to reach them were unsuccessful — one number I found was disconnected; another led to an answering machine that cut me off before I could finish leaving a message both times I dialed.
Records filed with the Cumberland County Registry of Deeds shed some light on the sad situation. The Richards bought the house in July of 1998 for an un-Cape-like sum of $101,000. (Trulia estimates the average list price in this ZIP Code to be almost seven times that amount these days.) They refinanced the mortgage twice last decade, but Chase Bank initiated foreclosure proceedings in October 2007 (around the same time sources say the place was vacated). A foreclosure judgment was finally reached in February of last year.
The property hasn’t tripped the town code office’s radar yet. Other than a permit for new siding in 1989, its file is squeaky clean, said code enforcement officer Benjamin McDougal. “Our office has made no contact with the owner as we have not been aware that the property is derelict,” he told me.
There’s no indication the place is for sale at present. The most recent tax assessment pegged the property’s value at $176,000 — still a steal, even with the added expense of an industrial weed whacker.
— Patrick Banks
