The BNA Citizens’ Trash Brigade and the BAYsideBEEs volunteer corps teamed up to tackle un-shoveled sections of sidewalk on Parris Street this morning. Portland landowners outside of the Downtown District are responsible for sidewalk snow removal, and most of them do their civic duty, but as any Portland pedestrian will tell you, any stretch of sidewalk is only as good as its weakest link. There’s a reason for each forgotten patch of snow and ice of course—but instead of complaining about it, we got out there and got it done. Thanks to everyone who participated, and thanks to Wilson BBQ for offering a discount on our afterglow!
Lots going on in Bayside, and the BNA teams are rising to meet the moment. If you want to join a team, just send an email to any of the groups below, and a team lead will get back to you asap. If you have an idea for a team and want to get it started, we want to hear from you. Let’s do it!
Safe Streets Team Public Safety, Walkability, Infrastructure, Crime prevention
Student Group liason to Baxter Academy and Portland High School
Tech Team Website, Workspace, Social Media, Calendar, Newsletter, etc.
Tenants’ Team Renters’ perspectives are at the forefront of this team’s activity.
Tree Team overseeing planting and maintenance, trails and green spaces
The Tech Team is working on better communication pathways for the general membership, including mailchimp, which will allow us to send targeted email news and allow subscribers to tailor how they receive updates from various teams. We’re also now using google workspace to organize teams into google groups that can share files, calendar events, to-do lists, plus follow and archive conversations by topic within each team and between teams. Setting up the groups in a way that is simple to use but powerful enough to keep track of team tasks and communications, calendar events, shared files and important links has proven to be a challenge, but worthwhile. If you have experience and/or interest in admin tools please consider joining the tech team and helping us out.
Recent News
December’s Safe Streets Meeting was met with a strong response from the community and from the media. Troy Bennett from Bangor Daily News was in attendance and wrote this article about the effort and subsequently WCSH6 Newscenter Maine picked up the story as did WGME CBS13 shown below. The next Safe Streets Team meeting will be Tuesday, February 25th, 6:00pm in the Steve Hirshon Community Room at Unity Village, 24 Stone Street, Portland.
If you missed last month’s BNA Board meeting on zoom, you can view a recording of it here: BNA Board Meeting January 7 2025 See below for details on the next board meeting.
Upcoming Events
Saturday January 25, 11am BNA Citizens’ Trash Brigade Parris Street Block Walk
UPDATE: With the recent snowfall we’re pivoting to salt & sand for sidewalks on Parris Street, which has several spots that need attention. We’ll provide buckets of sand & salt from the city lot, shovels and a few ice choppers. If you have an ice chopper please bring it! We’ll warm up afterward at Wilson BBQ.
OP: We’re coming together for a short pickup party targeting Preble Street in particular, focusing on bits and butts that get overlooked during the Spring & Fall cleanup, and also to get eyes on the street to take stock of the pedestrian experience, flag infrastructure concerns, and to get to know each other. Afterward we’re planning to gather at Wilson BBQ to warm up, wind down, and plan for next month’s block walk. We’ll meet at 72 Parris Street and walk together. Trash bags and gloves provided.
Monday January 27, 6:00pm Portland Music Hall Presentation Composing Room @ Press Hotel 119 Exchange St, Portland, ME
The BNA Development Developments Team invites Baysiders to attend a public presentation by Portland Performance Ventures, LLC on their proposal for a 3,300-seat Live Nation music venue at the site of the old Press Herald printing press building across Myrtle Street from the Merrill Auditorium in Bayside. More information on the project is available on the city of portland website here: https://selfservice.portlandmaine.gov/
Wednesday January 29, 8:30am Bayside Business Breakfast Club Isa Bistro, 79 Portland St. Portland, ME
The Bayside Neighborhood Association is starting 2025 with a renewed commitment to connecting with diverse stakeholders and providing opportunities for community members to come together in pursuit of shared goals. To that end, we’re excited to present the first of what will be monthly events specifically for Bayside business owners to meet in an informal setting to meet, chat, and plan a better future for all Baysiders.
Mission Statement: “The Bayside Neighborhood Association (BNA) empowers the Bayside community by building meaningful partnerships that promote health, safety, green spaces, diversity, housing, and sustainable development for all who live, work, and play in this unique urban neighborhood.”
We need your help! Please consider a tax-deductible donation to the BNA, a 501c(3) non-profit organization. Contact Jim Hall, treasurer for more information at jim@baysideportland.org
Join us online Tuesday, January 7, 2025 at 6pm EST
The BNA board of directors meets on the first Tuesday of every month. Meetings are held virtually through zoom on odd-numbered months, and meetings are held in-person on even-numbered months. The public is welcome to attend. Membership in the Bayside Neighborhood Association is open to all who live, work and play in our neighborhood. The agenda for board meetings is set by the board prior to each meeting.
All Board members, guests, and meeting attendees shall behave with respect and civility during all meetings, events, and activities. This shall apply to both in-person and electronic forums. Behavior which may be ruled out of order includes but is not limited to the following:
• Interruptions of Board members, guests, or attendees who have been given the floor to speak to the group. • Badgering, bullying, or harassing comments or behaviors directed at other people. Enforcement of Rules of Conduct During meetings: • Board members, guests, and meeting attendees who violate rules of conduct will be given a verbal warning by the Chair. • Any person who receives one verbal warning from the Chair during the meeting will be asked to leave after a 2nd incident; or, in an electronic forum, they will be removed by the host after a 2nd incident. • Any person ejected from a meeting will be banned from the subsequent meeting. • Any person ejected from two meetings in a calendar year will be permanently banned.
Happy Holidays from the BNA! We’ve been working hard to increase capacity and drum up support for a number of initiatives central to our mission, and aligned with our stated community priorities for 2025. We’re looking for more engagement from the community at large as we build new teams and renew our lasting commitments. Here are some highlights:
We have a new Bayside Community Garden Team leader! Holly Picotte has been a great asset as a fellow gardener, volunteer, and crew member and is steeping up to manage and administer the BNA garden. She can be reached through email at garden@baysideportland.org or by filling out the form on our website here: https://baysideportland.org/bayside-community-garden-signup/ We’ll also be posting again in the springtime on instagram @baysidecommunitygarden
We have a new Safe Streets Team, inspired by the dialogue at our December 17th meeting with Mayor Dion, Chief Dubois, Midtown Community Policing and many residents and business owners. Our new neighbors Bowman and Anna Brown of Elda have stepped up to lead the team and keep the momentum going. You can contact them at safestreets@baysideportland.org As always, the BNA continues to advocate for the safety and dignity of all residents, workers, and visitors.
The BNA is also very much involved with the exciting new project at Justin Alfond’s 72 Parris Street property, which he is generously gifting to the community, forming a steering committee including BNA board members, residents, and other stakeholders to determine the best use of the former Fork Food Lab site. Check out this video of the first planning stage: 72 Parris Street Project
In other news: Meet the BAYsideBEEs!
The BAYsideBEEs volunteer corps is the brainchild of longtime Bayside artist in residence Deirdre Paul. Deirdre hopes to add “more fun” to everything we get done. From street cleanups to community meals, block parties, greening and educational programming, the BAYsideBEEs will be there to help, and we need your help to make that happen! Contact us at volunteer@baysideportland.org Working on hats too!
Citizens’ Trash Brigade — Our ongoing volunteer activities have always included a spring and fall neighborhood cleanup. We’re already planning our spring cleanup and raffle on April 19, 2025, and need a big turnout to cover every street. Another new neighbor, Megan Holt has suggested forming the BNA Citizens’ Trash Brigade. Great idea Megan, let’s do it! In addition to our spring and fall cleanups, the CTB is planning monthly targeted cleanups, one block at a time, where we stick together instead of spreading out. The first one will be Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 11am to Pickup Preble Street, weather permitting. We’ll meet at the 72 Parris Street parking lot, gloves and bags provided, hot drinks afterward. Contact us at CTB@baysideportland.org for more information.
(above) Volunteers and staff for the Wayside Food Programs’ Community Lunch at 409 Cumberland Avenue. Mondays noon-1pm, starting again after the holidays on January 6th. All are welcome.
Next BNA Board Meeting: Tuesday, January 7, 2025 6pm online using zoom. Open to the public. Please email info@baysideportland.org for an invitation and link. Check our community calendar often for updates
“The Bayside Neighborhood Association (BNA) empowers the Bayside community by building meaningful partnerships that promote health, safety, green spaces, diversity, housing, and sustainable development for all who live, work, and play in this unique urban neighborhood.”
We need your help! Please consider a tax-deductible year-end donation to the BNA, a 501c(3) non-profit organization. Contact Jim Hall, treasurer for more information at treasurer@baysideportland.org
in the Steve Hirshon Community Room at Unity Village, 24 Stone Street Portland
Please help us help our neighbors who have recently experienced violent assaults in our cherished community. We’re committed to making sure all our residents, visitors, and workers feel safe walking the streets of Bayside at any hour. It is vitally important to raise our voices together against violence of any kind. We’ll be joined by Jennifer Rogers of Midtown Community Policing who will talk us through the current situation on the street, the history of violent crime in the city, and the responses and solutions at hand. Everyone is welcome to attend and encouraged to speak their mind. We want to hear your struggles, your ideas, and your hopes for the future of Bayside. For more information reach out to info@baysideportland.org
Thanks for being part of the solution!
Here’s a report put together by Safe Streets Team board liaison Deborah Van Hoewyk:
On Saturday October 24 2020 the BNA held our annual fall community cleanup. We had 34 volunteers, masked up and socially distanced. We managed to clean up just about every street in Bayside. Our helpers included Amistad, their executive director, peer outreach team, and EIGHT of the people they reach; Coals Bayside donated coffee and hosted us in the outdoor dining area to distribute snacks and supplies and two Coals staff members helped with the cleanup. Portland Downtown, BNA board members, and community members also joined in, including new friends from the West End, and old friends from Parkside. Heidi Souerwine designed the posters.
Our generous raffle prize donors included Two Fat Cats Bakery, Leavitt & Sons Deli, Portland, Banded Brewing Co., Nomadic Goat Salon, and BNA board member Scott Morrison, who donated a Coals gift certificate.
Stephanie Scherer organized a team of BNA members, Bayside residents, and other local volunteers for a clean-up of Portland street and surrounding blocks. Portland’s Public Works team provided support, tools, and collection of full trash bags to make a noticeable difference in the cleanliness of a typically litter-prone area of Bayside.
Ethnic diversity, urban change, and a whole lot of churches have characterized Bayside since its earliest days. This walking tour on October 18 explored Bayside history, particularly in relationship to Anshe Sfard, the long-demolished Chassidic synagogue at Wilmot Street and Cumberland Avenue. Did you ever wonder what Bayside looked like BEFORE Franklin Arterial and Franklin Towers turned its eastern border into a midcentury modern mess? Who lived here? From worship to work, from living to learning, what was life like in Bayside. This tour covered the Jewish community in its context—an area once bustling with shops, rooming houses and private homes, churches, factories, and schools. Bayside was a neighborhood of people usually on the way to somewhere else—immigrants lived side-by-side with local folks, and very few lived here for very long. The walking tour and a presentation were the concluding events in a research project conducted by the Maine Historical Society (MHS), Mt. Carmel Cemetery Association, and the Bayside Neighborhood Association. An online exhibit will open on the MHS website Maine Memory Network.
Thank you to all the sponsors, volunteers, friends, and supporters who made our event possible, and a special hat’s off to BNA member Laura Cannon for organizing it. Garbage to Garden partnered with many neighborhoods, including ours. City of Portland Public Works provided workers, gloves, trash bags, shovels and tools, mulch, and trash collection. Couldn’t have done what we did without them! We collected at least 20 large bags of trash and mulched dogwood trees from Elm St to Franklin St along the trail. Click on the photos below to enlarge.
Join us this Saturday May 3, 2014, for our annual clean-up!
Meet at 10:00 a.m. on the Bayside Trail near Trader Joe’s for supplies and instructions! Click on the image below to enlarge.
Here are some photos from the fantastic September 15 event.
Join Us for 2013 Bayside Phoenix Fair!
We hope you will join us for a fun Bayside neighborhood event, brought to you by the Bayside Neighborhood Association.
Help Make a Park from a Block!
Sunday, September 15, 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Kennebec Street (“Phoenix Square”) between Preble and Elm (by the Flea-for-All)
West end of Bayside Trail at Elm (behind Trader Joe’s)
Come learn more about Bayside.
Join our campaign to turn this block of Kennebec Street into an urban park.
When the City extends Somerset Street and the Bayside Trail through to Deering Oaks, this street can become an oasis in Bayside. Phoenix Square will link Bayside Bowl, the new Portland and Rochester pub, The Shoe, the Flea-for-All, and other local businesses over to the trail, right at the doorstep of the Federated Cos. planned apartment complex.
Neighbors, property owners, business owners, and all those who live, work and play in Bayside are invited to come and socialize and enjoy games, food, music, puppets and more. For more information, or to volunteer or provide further support for this event, please email bnaportland@gmail.com .
PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS:
Deering Oaks Rose Garden Circle Celebration
On June 21, Bayside and Parkside Neighbors joined Anne Pringle, President of the Friends of Deering Oaks Park, City of Portland staff, community volunteers from Serenity House and others to celebrate the replanting of the Rose Garden Circle in Deering Oaks Park. The former roses were hard to maintain and required a lot of pesticides. The new roses were specifically chosen by rose experts to adapt to the Northeast climate without the use of labor intensive care and pesticides. (Click on the photos to see full-size; hit ESC to return to page.)
The Very First Bayside Neighborhood Association Flea Market
Saturday, June 1, from 11:00 to 4:00.
It’s all happening in the Goodwill parking lot next to Dyer’s Variety, 45 Portland Street.
COME ON BY!!!!
If you have any items you don’t need but are too good to throw away and you just haven’t gotten them down to the Salvation Army or out to the Goodwill, PLEASE DONATE THEM. The BNA needs to start raising money–anything will help. Anything that will fit on a table or on the ground in front of it is good (that’s pretty much everything, right?). We’ll also have a rack for clothes (please include hangers).
To donate, please bring items down to the parking lot between 10:00 and 11:00 so we can get them priced. If that time can’t work for you, email me and we’ll see what we can do about picking them up.
If you look around and decide you want to have a table all your own, the BNA can retroactively permit you with the City (that will cost only $20 because the BNA’s getting the big-bucks operator permit). We have SOME extra tables, and you can put stuff on a tarp or blanket on the ground, a card table, whatever. P.S. Dyer’s makes great chowder!
Bayside Health Fair 2013
This year’s Bayside Health Fair on May 18 brought lots of neighbors out for this fun annual event, which featured informational tables, free ice cream, baby goats, live music, Irish step dancing and more. Kids had lots of activities, including free fitted bike helmets and a raffle that included free bikes, free tickets to the Children’s Museum and other fun prizes.
Hats off to the USM nursing students who are the primary organizers and do a wonderful job of bringing this annual event to Bayside! We appreciate their hard work! Click on the photos below to see larger images.
City of Portland Bulky Item Collection Program April 2013
Visit the website at http://recycle.portlandmaine.gov/ to learn more about the “Bulky Waste Sticker Program.” There is an informational video that should tell you all you need to know.
For a list of items that can and cannot be picked up click here.
Large bulky items have a $40 fee per item for items weighing over 30 pounds and/or are too large for one person to lift safely.
No household hazardous waste or E-waste is accepted.
Unity Village Community Room 2-4 pm Saturday December 22 24 Stone Street, Bayside
Please email Steve Hirshon at steve.hirshon@gmail.com if you have a recipe you’d like to make so we can have ingredients available.
Kids and friends of Bayside welcome!
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Thank you to everyone who supported the Bayside Neighborhood Association’s
Annual Meeting & Harvest Dinner on Saturday, November 3 at the Boys & Girls Club
It was a wonderful event with great food, friends and discussion.
An amazing array of delicious food.Preparing the dinner.Tina helping out with the dumplings.Mike carving the turkey.Susan stirring the pot.
BNA Secretary Colette Bouchard presents outgoing President Alex Landry with a gavel and a gift.
Incoming President Steve Hirshon speaks about the coming year.Denise overseeing the election process.A BNA member casting his ballot.BNA members and friends.BNA members and friends.
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PHOENIX SQUARE:
IMAGINING A NEW PUBLIC SPACE
Saturday, September 29, 8:30 a.m. to Noon
Starting with a hearty breakfast, this event marks the culmination of BNA’s participation in the Meeting Place project, a year-long series of community-building art projects. The event signals the opportunity for neighbors to claim the block of Kennebec Street between Preble and Elm streets for future public space by using Creative Placemaking tools, which includes creating four temporary places on the block, as teams come together to re-imagine Phoenix Square in their own unique ways.
Schedule:
8:30 a.m. Family Style Pancake Breakfast ($2/$5 family)
9:00 a.m. Create a Playground including kids activities
10:00 a.m. Open Square team competition to re-imagine places
11:00 a.m. Open Air Theater Share stories and experiences of Baysiders past and present
Meeting Place is an arts-based community development project to increase pride, unity, economic vibrancy and civic engagement with a diverse (economic, racial, ethnic, age, gender) group of residents in four Portland neighborhoods. Participating neighborhoods include Bayside, Libbytown, East Bayside and the West End.
Each neighborhood has a lead artist who is working on the Gateway Arts Project for the neighborhood-wide festival in September:
“Libbytown Street Poems” led by Betsy Sholl, featuring stories edited into Poetry Sidewalk Stencils
“West End Snapshots” led by Tonee Harbert, featuring stories and photographs
“Bayside Stories” led by Daniel Minter, featuring stories and block print images on Art Cards
East Bayside “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors,”led by Tim Clorius, Jonathon Cook, Jan Piribeck, and Kelly Rioux, featuring Wire Fence Murals made with recycled materials
All the art work and stories generated will be exhibited in various neighborhood locations during Meeting Place Neighborhood Open House Days: September 22nd – Libbytown & West End Sept 29th – Bayside and East Bayside.
Partners include Creative Portland, Portland Buy Local, Portland Trails, Portland Housing Authority, Portland Adult Education, League of Young Voters, Maine Historical Society and the City of Portland.
This year’s Bayside Block Party was another huge success, featuring Karaoke, a kids Moon Bounce Castle, games, yard sales, watermelon, ice cream and more. A huge thank you to our sponsors: Preble Street; Goodwill Industries of Northern New England; Lost Coin Cafe; G.R. Dimillo’s Bayside Restaurant & Sports Bar, the City of Portland, Dyer’s Variety Store and Ricky’s Tavern.
The kids loved the Moon Bounce Castle!
Yard Sale
Bayside folks watching karaoke
Girls singing karaoke at the 2012 Bayside Block Party
Tina Singing Karaoke
THE BAYSIDE NURSING COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP ELEVENTH ANNUAL HEALTH FAIR
On a recent gorgeous Saturday on May 19, 2012, from 11:00a.m. to 2:00p.m., The Bayside Nursing Community Partnership held their 11th annual Bayside Health Fair. The fair featured music, games and face-painting for kids, a raffle and representatives from local community organizations, including the Portland Public Library, The Frannie Peabody Center, the American Red Cross, and many others. It provided an important opportunity for neighborhood residents to learn about critical health and safety issue. The Bayside Nursing Community Partnership is part of the USM School of Nursing. The Bayside Neighborhood Association participated by hosting informational tables about BNA and the Bayside Community Garden.
