Your recent editorial concerning Williston-West Church misapprehends the path of the public discourse (“More work needed on West End church plan,” March 3).

Neighborhood meetings were held to attempt a consensus position. The abandoned church is a difficult building because, unlike St. Lawrence Church, which is on an arterial street, Williston is tucked into the middle of a historic neighborhood. Many homes surrounding it are themselves historic buildings from the 1860s and 1870s and predate the church, which is located where it is because it started as a local adjunct chapel of State Street Church.

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Residents of Portland’s Western Promenade neighborhood disagree over whether it’s appropriate to reuse the former Williston-West Church as office space and a performance venue. 2012 File Photo/John Patriquin

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• West End divided on Williston-West Church plan

When the neighborhood tried to engage the Australian developer regarding some accommodation to their concerns, the developer declined and instead hired a public relations representative to attempt to control the public discourse.

You also failed to note what the developer is proposing. His U.S. business has existing office space downtown. He wants a zone change in this designated Historic District Neighborhood for general commercial office space to accommodate up to 14 full-time “equivalent” employees (which could number many more people) in the meeting house, and turn the sanctuary into a performance venue.

His limits on that performance proposal to date are to restrict night-time performances to eight times per month. As the owner of a historic building, he need not meet parking requirements that would otherwise be required. Fair-minded people can recognize that for any residential neighborhood, this is not insignificant.

As one resident of the neighborhood, I reflect a sentiment that reuse of the church is a shared goal. Other alternative reuses have never been given time to emerge. Rather, the developer posits a false choice – either accept his project or the building will be lost. Most doubt that Portland has so little imagination or commitment to its architectural fabric that no other outcomes are possible.

U. Charles Remmel II

Portland

In the matter of the Williston-West Church, I am entirely in agreement with my neighbor, architect Paul Stevens, who advocates using the church sanctuary as a public venue for meetings and performances, like the former St. Lawrence Church.

In fact, Williston-West has long been used for meetings, lectures and concerts. I fail to see why the use of the parish house for offices would be disruptive to the neighborhood. Our priorities should be finding appropriate uses for the buildings and ensuring their preservation.

I have lived in the Western Promenade neighborhood for 20 years. I am not acquainted with Charles Remmel, founder of the Western Promenade Neighborhood Association, and I have never been a member of that organization.

The association has no official status with regard to the neighborhood; it is an informal group of residents, including many of my friends. To imply that it speaks for or in any way represents the entire neighborhood is misleading and irresponsible.

Thomas L. Hinkle

Portland

People should do more to save endangered animals

I think endangered animals should be saved because the populations of some animals have gone down severely over the past years. These animals are becoming endangered and it may be because of us. We’re taking away their habitats and leaving them to find a new one ore die.

Instead of cutting down great big jungle trees, we could go find dead trees without any living things in them and cut them down. Some people also kill these animals for their fur for coats, rugs and so on. We could just use fake fur for all that stuff.

These animals are also important to the society of nature. Some of them are an important part of the food chain. For example, the elk eats the grass, the snake eats the elk and the cheetah eats the snake.

Also, some animals have special partnerships like the bird that eats the bugs, dirt and parasites of the hippo. The bird ends up full and the hippo clean.

We could also make a better environment for these animals with donations to organizations that help regrow their habitats, treat their injuries or build sanctuaries for them. Factories could stop dumping waste and more people could recycle so there are fewer landfills.

This is why I think endangered animals should be saved.

Abbie Nelson

Grade 5

Buxton Center Elementary School

Son’s comment reveals heartbreak of drugs

The Feb. 18 edition of The Portland Press Herald contained an “In Memoriam” ad for a strikingly beautiful young woman on what would have been her 30th birthday.

Her photo was surrounded by words of love and sorrow from family members concluding with the poignant words of her young son.

The youngster, who has known the pain and sorrow that drug addiction brings first hand, minces no words.

He simply tells “you people” on drugs to “smarten up because it will kill you someday” and, in his own way, warns that the ones you love the most will be the ones you hurt the most. (“If you love a kid, she or him will be sad!”)

We should all applaud the courage of this family for being so open about the cause of the terrible price they paid and for publishing this youngster’s words just as he wrote them and just as he felt them.

It was her beautiful face that caught my eye, but it was the wizened words of her child that touched my heart. We can only hope and pray that somehow, somewhere his words will hit home and someone will “smarten up” and change their lifestyle before another family knows the heartbreak this family has endured.

M. Joseph Murray

Gray

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