Good morning Portland! Your connection to what's happening around town is here. Take a sip of coffee and read on. ☕️️
In today's newsletter:
Also on today's calendar: Good Together; Akwaaba Table Beer Dinner and 9 more events.
Today's riddle: What did one strawberry say to the other strawberry? 🤔 (Answer below!)
1. Portland housing and economic development director resigns (mainebiz.biz) — Portland's housing and economic development director Greg Watson has resigned after returning briefly from paid administrative leave tied to an assault charge that was later dropped for lack of evidence. Assistant city manager Dena Libner had been filling in, and veteran municipal leader Pat Finnigan will now serve as interim director while the city prepares a search for a permanent replacement.
2. Portland rolls back 100-foot buffer zone for businesses with entertainment licenses (wmtw.com) — Portland's city council has unanimously repealed a decades-old rule that banned entertainment-licensed venues from operating within 100 feet of each other, opening the door for more nightlife options downtown. Bar owners like Cocktail Mary's Isaac Macdougal say the change will boost drag and dance events and better match today's Old Port, which city leaders describe as more retail- and hospitality-focused than in the 1990s.
3. Portland's new social housing task force presents recommendations (wgme.com) — Portland's social housing task force has delivered recommendations that could see the city directly owning and financing new mixed-income, permanently affordable housing. Ideas include about 40 city-owned rentals on Cornell Street and additional units in a Portland Housing Authority project on Congress Street, funded through municipal bonds as officials seek to keep residents in downtown neighborhoods.
4. PBS News Hour Richard Russo visits places left behind in 'Under the Falls' (pbs.org) — Portland readers might enjoy knowing that novelist Richard Russo now lives and works along Maine's coast and has family running a bookstore in Portland. In a new PBS NewsHour interview, he talks about his latest novel "Under the Falls," his Adirondack mill-town roots, and why he keeps returning to struggling communities in his fiction.
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Ok Portland! So now you're in the loop about what's happening today. Thanks for reading, and see you in your inbox next time! Oh -- and if you like what you're reading, invite a friend to Patch AM!
-- The Patch AM Team
P.S. The answer to today's riddle: If you weren't so sweet, we wouldn't be in this jam! (Thank you Patti F. for sending it in!)
Got a good riddle for PatchAM? Submit it here!
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