Matt Curtis, owner and founder of Cadillac Mountain Sports, announced Tuesday that he’s closing his three stores on Congress Street in Portland, partly due to what he called “a slap in the face from the City Council.”

That “slap” was the law the council passed last November limiting the number, size and location of chain or franchise (so-called “formula”) businesses in the Old Port, downtown and the city’s rapidly developing Bayside neighborhood. The council may change or even discard the limits, and a citizen-initiated repeal effort could strike them from the City Code this summer, but Curtis doesn’t have time to wait for those possibilities to pan out.

Sales have been declining at Cadillac’s three downtown shops (two of which exclusively sell Patagonia and North Face products), and the formula limits convinced Curtis that business will only continue to drop in the heart of Maine’s largest city.

“We cannot continue to grow in Portland with this ban, and we cannot reverse our sales declines if Congress Street deteriorates,” said Curtis, who owns five other Cadillac locations, four of them in Bar Harbor. “This ban is the opposite of everything I’ve learned about downtown revitalization,” he said in the press release announcing the closure.

Across town, a developer is sounding a similar warning. Drew Swenson is a partner in the team building Riverwalk, a huge complex of condominiums, townhouses, offices and retail space planned for land across from the Ocean Gateway cruise ship terminal on the eastern waterfront. Earlier this month, Swenson told councilors the $75 million-plus project has been “substantially placed at risk” due to the limits.

Swenson said executives at three “respected, four-star restaurants” have turned their backs on Riverwalk due to the restrictions. The law dictates that in this part of town, formula restaurants and other businesses cannot have more than 3,000 square feet of service area, which is the area for customers, as opposed to a kitchen or backroom storage area. They must also be at least 400 feet from one another. This effectively creates a 502,400-square-foot circle around any formula business, within which no other formula business may open – an area nearly as large as the multi-block project Riverwalk is trying to build.

Supporters of the limits told councilors the law doesn’t just ban certain types of businesses. “It’s about thinking creatively” to help more small-scale, homegrown enterprises do business in town, said Carol Kelly. “Don’t be afraid to think outside the big box,” said Joan Leitzer, another supporter.

There’s some evidence commercial property owners have done just that. For example, a similar city ordinance, also passed late last year, effectively bans fast-food restaurants from about two dozen “neighborhood business zones” around the city, based on the high levels of traffic such eateries typically generate.

That ordinance sunk Joe Pompeo’s plans to lease his building on Stevens Avenue to a Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee. In response, Pompeo now plans to reopen the brick-oven pizza and sub shop he operated there in the 1990s.

Mike Harris, proprietor of the downtown sports bar The Stadium, had planned to open a Hooters restaurant in half of the building he leases on Congress Street. Harris’ announcement of this last August sparked the formula-ban movement in Portland that ultimately killed his plan.

Harris adjusted by replacing boobs with a mechanical bull to attract customers, and for a while, it worked. On Wednesday and Saturday nights, people packed both The Stadium and the largely unused Congress Street side of his space, where the bull was set up.

Then, shortly before New Year’s Eve, vandals thoroughly trashed The Stadium in a late-night orgy of destruction that caused nearly $750,000 in damages. Police are still investigating the crime (there was no indication it was inspired by Hooters), and Harris said he hopes insurance will cover most of the cost and allow him to reopen later this year.

By that time, a city-wide vote on the limits could allow him to proceed with his Hooters plans. Opponents are collecting the signatures necessary to force a repeal vote in June. A separate measure, introduced by a city councilor critical of the limits, would “sunset” the formula law at the end of June, pending the report of a task force charged with assessing several factors impacting downtown business, including crime.

But the wheels of commerce spin faster than the gears of city government. And if Cadillac Mountain’s closure and Riverwalk’s risk are any indication, this car is already speeding toward the edge of a cliff.

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