Portland Maine
Thursday, May 28, 1998
India Street area's revival
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Coffee By Design opens its third coffeehouse on the Portland peninsula - and this one's a roastery as well - at the corner of India and Newbury streets. |
What would you call an area not more than one square mile that contains several restaurants, a corner store, coffee shop, bicycle shop, glassblower's studio, art studios, an Italian grocery, office space, a brewery, skate shop, surf shop, sporting goods store, laundromat, and much more that I'm sure I'm leaving out? A village, maybe? How about at least a neighborhood . . . |
"I see India Street as being like a river from which many tributaries will flow," says Shane Garcia, owner of Shane's Skate Groove at 72 India Street. "We've got the skate, the coffee, the bike, the (Amato's) store, Uncle Billy's... There's Mike, there's Steve... it's like a regular neighborhood here! Garcia's river analogy is interesting bearing in mind that the Portland peninsula's first settler, George Cleeve, chose the |
Shane Garcia's skateboard boutique is one of dozens
of |
foot of India Street to set up camp around 1620. So there is strong chance that at least some major streams did at one time flow through the area en route to the Atlantic ocean at the foot of the street. The area's rich history is one of the reasons that Jonathan St. Laurent, owner/chef of Uncle Billy's Bar-B-Que, decided to relocate from South Portland and open up shop in February. Tucked away at the far end of Newbury Street, Uncle Billy's is next door to the soon-to-be-renovated Abyssinian church, which holds historical significance as a haven for black slaves smuggled out of captivity from the south via the Underground Railroad. The church will serve as black history museum when the renovation is completed, probably in a couple of years. "I definitely would have never moved here a few years ago, but there's so much happening around here now that it made sense. There's a certain energy here," says St. Laurent. "A lot of spirit, a lot of history." | |
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Alan Spear is co-owner of Coffee By Design, another new India Street neighborhood establishment that opened May 14. It is the company's third store on the peninsula. He shares St. Laurent's feelings about the area.
"It feels like it's on the cusp of a renewed energy." he says. "We wanted to be in a place where we would be a part of the community, more of a community coffee house." He also says the area's zoning for light manufacturing was an incentive as well, and the company has invested in on-site manufacturing equipment to produce roasted coffees.
With Maine Medical Center about to construct a new facility at the top of the street, on the location of the former Levinsky's, people traffic should continue to increase, as should the demand for goods and services from the area.
What we are experiencing is the bursting of the fast-filling bubble that is the relatively small geographic area of Intown Portland. Crippled by the devastation to the sense of community and pedestrian atmosphere caused by Franklin Arterial's intrusion in the mid-1960's, the India Street neighborhood is finally beginning to recover. It was once known as "Little Italy" for its concentration of Italian immigrants who, for the most part, both worked and lived within the area.
But at that time, Federal Street reached all the way in a straight line to Monument Square, instead of consisting of today's two dead-end sections criss-crossed by Franklin Arterial. And Newbury Street stretched uninterrupted into the heart of the Old Port to Market Street, all the way from the foot of Munjoy Hill. Such a setup encouraged the flow of pedestrian traffic to and from the India Street area.
Restoring such easy pedestrian access to the town center will be essential if the area is to maintain its growth. A perfect opportunity appears to exist at the end of Federal Street, which meets with a corner of Lincoln Park.
If India Street business owners can convince city government that they owe the area restitution for cutting it off from commerce years ago, then we may be drinking coffee on a skateboard rolling down India Street for much longer than it takes to run an isolated business district into the ground.
This worn walking path at the dead-end of Federal Street near India Street is a direct route across Franklin Arterial to Monument Square. A proper pedestrain way across the arterial to the edge of Lincoln Park would be a big boost for the India Street area, making it more a part of the city's center.
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