Planning Decisions, Inc.

THE BOTTOM LINE FROM CHUCK LAWTON

Oil Tank Farms, Creativity and Growth

Published Sunday March 30, 2008

I know many people who’ve been to Bilbao;
I know very few people who’ve been to Bilbao twice.
~ Willard Holmes, Director Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT.
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The Maine Center for Creativity kicked off its signature event this week—an international competition to solicit designs for painting the Sprague oil tanks in South Portland. Sprague’s operational manager, the state’s tourism director, South Portland’s city manager and Portland’s mayor all gushed rhapsodic about creating a beautiful landmark at one of our region’s most visible gateways. Over the years, millions of auto and air travelers will remember their entry into Maine by whatever strikingly different appearance the soon to be repainted oil tanks assume. Talk of an unforgettable, “world-class” destination attraction filled the room. My head was spinning with visions of the Colossus of Rhodes, the Sydney Opera House, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

But whatever it may be, the attraction itself is not the point. Oil tanks, however imaginatively they may be painted, will not turn the Portland region into an ever more thriving, economically prosperous metropolis. But creativity will. By themselves, painted oil tanks will simply be cute—worth a trip just to see them—but the city around them, just another quaint 19th century northeastern town slowly slipping below the waves of what Richard Florida calls the world’s Pacific future. But as a manifestation of a region brimming with creativity, they have the potential to be what Portland mayor Ed Suslovic called “truly transformative.”

Easy to say, sounds important, but what, exactly, does that mean—“truly transformative?” At a time when we’re facing another cyclical economic downturn with its inevitable catastrophic impacts on those businesses and households just barely hanging on to financial survival, transformative means acknowledging and embracing the reality that creativity is our only sustainable competitive advantage. Brainpower and imagination systematically deployed to create beauty and solve problems is our only hope for recovery from this or any other recession.

It was particularly telling that the Center for Creativity held its press conference in the sun filled atrium of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, overlooking both Portland harbor and Commercial Street. Watching the artists, politicians and press mingle while the Institute’s research scientists squeezed through the crowd to get from lab to office, I recalled what the Institute’s President, Don Perkins, had told me years ago. “We designed the atrium,” he said, “so that our scientists could get out of the lab and meet others informally, because that’s where new ideas are born, that’s where innovation occurs, that’s where the truly creative work is started.” I doubt very much that Don had envisioned shellfish biologists bumping into oil tank painters, but then that’s the point of promoting creativity—you can’t ever be sure who will show up or what will happen.

But happen it must. People may visit Portland once to see some crazy colored oil tanks, but they will come to stay only if they can find or make creative jobs here. What will these jobs be? Making toys for dogs, super bowl ads, plastics from potatoes, an unforgettable week boating in the Gulf of Maine, precision metal components for a Boeing jet, advanced carbon composite wind turbine blades, a custom yacht, progress toward the identification of a gene therapy for curing breast cancer, an Emmy award winning video of a literal soda fountain. The list is endless, limited only by the imaginations and energy of those who want to live in Maine. And that’s where our public policy must focus—on identifying, nurturing, supporting and celebrating creative enterprises.

If we are to turn from our current unsustainable and self-contradictory path of ever-greater social divisions and ever-greater dependence on transfer payments, we must embrace an entrepreneurial culture of self reliance, a culture that celebrates the creation and growth of enterprises built on the imaginations and creative energies of Maine people—those who live here now, those who might live here in the future and those who visit with us once, then twice and then regularly.

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