Don’t blow it More ridiculous, but doable: turn the Civic Center into a giant alt-sports park BY ALEX IRVINE

If a new civic center is built, why not keep the old one instead of dynamiting it for more condos?

There’s no guarantee that Joe Boulos’s new civic-center/office building/whatever else project will ever get built, but if it does reach fruition, the City of Portland and Cumberland County are going to have a tricky situation on their hands with the current Cumberland County Civic Center. Civic Center attorney Len Nelson says that the Civic Center Authority — and indirectly the county — owns the land, but according to outgoing chair Tom Bartell, the scope of the authority’s charter extends only to the construction of the existing building; to tear it down, sell it, or even build the new one envisioned as part of the Boulos Boulos Folly, " there’s work that would have to be done, maybe through the Legislature. " And that’s forgetting about the fact that Boulos is looking for the state to kick in something like $60 million to get everything off the ground.

" There really hasn’t been much in the way of discussion of what to do with the old one, " Bartell says. " There may be some municipal use for it, I don’t know; people have shied away from speculating on what’s going to happen " because of lingering uncertainties about the Boulos project’s financing. " Part of that may be a swap of land. We may need to sell [the land the current civic center occupies] and roll that into the financing, either with a swap or plain old cash. "

This is the ideas issue, though, so let’s pretend all of that happens. The Boulos project goes ahead, the state comes up with some money to help, the Civic Center Authority gets all of its statutory ducks in a row without having to sell the existing building, and the question looms: What the hell do we do with this giant concrete white elephant on an extremely valuable parcel of land? Real-estate developers are no doubt drooling over the prospect of downtown acres newly available for condofication; New Urbanism advocates will come up with attractive and forward-thinking mixed-use proposals that will be brushed aside by city planners because they are so attractive and forward-thinking; West Enders will point out that they have no open space left because the city built low-income housing on all of it, and suggest that a little green space wouldn’t be a bad idea; and sure as a 2 a.m. fight at Bill’s Pizza, some lunkhead somewhere will demand that the entire block be turned into a parking lot.

But . . . what if the building is spared? Then, you’re thinking, it’s a giant hole in the middle of downtown Portland (Jim Cloutier, among others, characterizes it that way even now). What other use is there for an arena building? Civic Center general manager Steve Crane sure wants the old building gone. " Why would we go through the hoops to get a new building and not terminate this one? " he asks. " Let’s put this piece of land back on the tax rolls. "

Well, here’s a wild-eyed idea that keeps the building and puts it back on the tax rolls: indoor extreme-sports mecca. With the seats removed and the space retrofitted, the future ex-civic center would comfortably fit a skate park, BMX track . . . you name it. A 50-foot climbing wall! Trampolines! A gymnastics area! All of it open year-round to provide healthy fun for those Portland kids everyone spends so much time worrying about. Parents can drop kids off for lessons in rock-climbing or gymnastics; skaters can scrape up their elbows even during the dreary, frigid months of the Maine winter; who knows, maybe the ice sheet can stay and play host to classes or local beer-league teams.

Eli Cayer, who is entering the fourth year of his quest to find a home for a new Portland skate park once the " temporary " Marginal Way park gives way to the planned train station, warms to the idea even though the probability of it ever becoming a reality is exceedingly small. He would even add a performance space, since " you could probably set it up so you could have shows. The whole idea of combining the music scene with the alternative sports scene, it just has a chance to draw more people — it’d be a great space. "

Sure, Portland needs more housing, but the housing that would be built on the Civic Center site is much more likely to be high-end rental and condo space instead of the affordable two- and three-bedroom apartments that are in such short supply. So rather than hand off another chunk of downtown Portland to real-estate speculation, how about we take seriously the idea that Portland is the best place in the country to raise kids — and make it that much better?

Alex Irvine can be reached at airvine@phx.com