Here’s a riddle for you…
They’ve been standing around Portland’s Monument Square doing absolutely nothing for years. They look like shit and smell like piss, a shameful blight on the heart of downtown, and their presence seems to attract more of their kind, hurting local business in the area. They bug you for money night and day, flashing or holding signs while offering nothing in return. Half the time, you can’t even understand what they’re saying.
Truth is, these derelicts are so far gone that they’ll never get it together on their own. They need a lot of public assistance, tens of millions of dollars from hardworking folks like you and me. They’ll tell you it wasn’t their fault they fell into such a sorry state. It’s this tough economy. Everything’s more expensive these days.
They’ve shared their grandiose ideas for a vibrant new life, but frankly, those dreams weren’t realistic. They never really had a workable plan or the money to make it happen. It was pure speculation, or perhaps a tax dodge.
Who, or what, is this?
The correct answer, of course, is the Time & Temperature Building and the M&T Bank Building on Congress Street.
If that riddle stumped you, that’s probably because you’ve been seeing all the press coverage this year about the terrible state of Monument Square, how it’s been overrun with unhoused people, most suffering from addictions and mental illness, whose presence is scaring shoppers and diners away and causing a glut of vacant storefronts throughout the Arts District.
Curiously absent from all this coverage was any finger-pointing directed at the two towering elephants across the street. Vacant since the pandemic or earlier, covered in plywood and graffiti, reeking of human excrement and misery, Time & Temp and M&T are a far larger and more lasting blight on the square than any transients passing through bumming butts. They’re basically hideously huge pedestals for billboards — the M&T sign atop the latter, promoting a corporate bank with no branch or offices in the building (which should make the sign illegal under our anti-billboard ordinance), and the “God clock” atop Time & Temp, with its many missing bulbs that make it even harder to figure out what the foreshortened four-letter words are supposed to be when they’re not imploring you to call a dead ambulance-chaser.
The gross deterioration of both skyscrapers, the first two constructed in Maine’s largest city — M&T in 1910, at 10 stories; T&T in 1924, with 12 original floors, now 14 — should be a scathing indictment of the lazy, corrupt, criminal or incompetent property owners who allowed these landmarks to die on their watch. Fabulously rich people with enormous resources at their disposal fucked up and failed hard, with terrible consequences for their tenants, neighbors, and everybody who walks by.
Yet the city’s politicians and business owners direct their opprobrium at penniless people nodding off on the benches. “Take all the seating out of the square,” goes one unhelpful suggestion. “Tell the van that delivers free food to stop somewhere else,” adds another ghoul.
At one point this spring, Portland Downtown, the nonprofit urban-improvement organization funded by Old Port and downtown property owners, suggested filling Monument Square with food trucks to keep the hungry away. That one got shot down quick by nearby restaurateurs. So we’re back to more cops and some khaki-clad “ambassadors” to “improve the visitor experience” (locals, apparently, are on their own).
A series of developers with fancy plans for both properties have come and gone with scant notice. The current plans, both of which envision high-end hotels in the towers, with some senior housing in the T&T Building’s annex along Preble Street, will not be possible without tens of millions of dollars of public money — in the form of historic preservation tax credits and such that can cut renovation costs by half or more — devoted to the hotels’ success. Last month we got news that MaineHousing, the state’s public housing authority, is giving $2.6 million of our cash to help Developers Collaborative, a private developer, create 41 units of senior housing in the T&T annex.
DC’s founding principal, Kevin Bunker, didn’t respond to our request for comment, but told the Press Herald “the bulk” of his $16 million project will be done on our dime.
Jim Brady, head of Fathom Companies, which now owns M&T and previously renovated The Press Hotel a block away, said his 92-room boutique hotel and restaurant — with a “speakeasy” hidden in a bank vault — would only be possible with state and federal tax credits that combined cover 45 percent of construction expenses. He expects construction will begin in earnest this year and be completed in 2027.
Jim’s a great guy, by the way, and personally, I’m happy to throw him a few bucks to help build his project. Having lots of hotel guests, diners and drinkers coming in and out of there will make the square safer, too.
But so would full public funding for housing, addiction treatment and mental health. Riddle me this: where could we find tens of millions of dollars for that?
