LOOKBACK: Celebrating Mainebiz's 20th anniversary
PHOTO/City of Portland Planning & Urban Development Dept.
Developer Chris Thompson's new $110 million project at Thompson's Point will include a 2,500-person event center and arena proposed as a new home for the Maine Red Claws basketball team and the country's first accredited circus school, the Circus Conservatory of America.
In this shortened work week leading up to Mainebiz’s 20th anniversary edition on Sept. 8, we’ve run a series of articles in our Daily electronic edition that shared we think are some of the most interesting, influential and even amusing stories from our 20 years of issues starting in December 1994, as well as the broader context in which they took place.
Today, some of those early ideas have come to fruition. For example, take the Maine International Trade Center, which has been organizing overseas trade missions, including a recent one to Iceland. That’s the result of nine months of deliberation in 1996, when the Governor's Advisory Council on International Trade recommended establishment of a Maine International Trade and Resource Center in Portland, with satellite offices throughout the state.
Another example is Thompson’s Point, which has been the target of many development plans, including in 1995, when Fishman Realty Group proposed Atlantic Portland, an effort to combine three important Portland projects: the Gulf of Maine Aquarium, a convention and commerce center and a multimodal transportation center into one complex on the 24-acre Thompson's Point. Alan Fishman, president of the realty group, estimated at the time that Atlantic Portland could be built for $125 million in three to five years.
This March, the Portland Planning Board unanimously approved a master plan to make a former industrial site at Thompson's Point into an arts, entertainment and office development. The $110 million project is to include a 2,500-person event center and arena that is being as a new home for the Maine Red Claws basketball team and the country's first accredited circus school, the Circus Conservatory of America.
There are many other examples of dreams becoming reality. Feel free to share your memories at #MB20LOOKBACK or via Twitter, Facebook or Google+ or on our website’s story comment sections.
In case you missed the three LOOKBACKS to our earliest issues, please visit the following:
LOOKBACK: Celebrating Mainebiz's 20th anniversary – the early days
LOOKBACK: Celebrating Mainebiz's 20th anniversary – the late 1990s
LOOKBACK: Celebrating Mainebiz's 20th anniversary – the early 2000s
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