photo/Patrick Banks

Welcome to Bayside — Portland’s Next Big Thing Since 1999.

To invert the famous quote attributed to Twain: Rumors of Bayside’s revival have been greatly exaggerated. Sure, there’ve been signs of life in the gritty industrial neighborhood over the past decade or so: Whole Foods, Bayside Bowl, the rebirth of the Miss Portland Diner. But vacant lots and blighted buildings still easily outnumber the bright spots.

Take the brick warehouse at 270-272 Lancaster St., behind the hulking U.S. Postal Service building along Forest Avenue. The windows are boarded up with weathered plywood, the Plexiglas portals in the garage door have been rendered opaque by the passage of time, and the weedy parking lot is accumulating an impressive collection of trash, including yellowing pages of The Portland Phoenix and several discarded bottles of ibuprofen. Crude graffiti tags have been scrawled on the walls and wood. A section of concrete pipe filled with garbage and discarded clothing sits on the edge of the Brattle Street side of the property; a long-abandoned, flat-tired U.S. Department of Transportation truck from the Port of Wilmington, Delaware, is parked on the Parris Street side.

The lights have been off here for a while. The most recent inhabitant of 270 Lancaster was florist-products wholesaler Alma Inc., last listed in the 2009 edition of the Polk City Directory for Portland. According to county property records, Alma Inc. sold the building to MBRO Lancaster LLC, of New Canaan, Connecticut, in September of that year, for a sum of $395,000. It doesn’t look like MBRO has done much with the place over the past six years, though city inspection records contain an expired permit, issued in 2012, to add a second story to the single-story portion of the building.

But, as ever, there are rumblings of rejuvenation in the area. Nearby on Kennebec Street, where workers at Century Tire had changed flats since the ’40s, a developer is threatening to build bland new retail space for a burrito franchise and a cell phone store. Bayside Bowl is preparing for a major expansion. And 270 Lancaster is on the verge of being sold again.

MBRO member Alice Mahoney told me the property is under contract and its sale is expected to be finalized this month. The new owners plan to redevelop the site, but to do so in a way that’s consistent with, or respectful of, the neighborhood’s industrial history — whatever that means. Mahoney declined to provide further details about the buyers-to-be or their plans, and her sister — who Mahoney said is handling the transaction — did not get back to me by press time, so we’ll have to wait and see what, if anything, happens.

“There is a lot going on here in the next five years, and to be part of it is exciting,” Josh Benthien, a developer of the chain-store space, told The Forecaster last spring.

When haven’t I heard that before?

— Patrick Banks