Fourteen residents living near the former St. John the Evangelist Church on outer Main Street in South Portland have signed a petition asking the City Council to declare the property a nuisance.

However, since the petition was filed with the city early last week, the property owner, Cafua Management, has cleaned up much of the property, which also includes a parsonage and a school.

City Clerk Emily Carrington said the nuisance petition is scheduled for a first review by the City Council on Aug. 1, unless the petition is withdrawn before then.

“Our hope is that this can be resolved between the landlord and the petitioners before it comes to council for public hearing,” she said this week.

Cafua purchased the property with the intention of redeveloping it into a new, 24-hour Dunkin’ Donuts store, but that plan was stymied by residents and eventually scuttled with a zone change enacted by the City Council.

In their nuisance petition, neighbors of the vacant church property said, “We request that the city of South Portland require the owners of the Saint John’s Church properties clean up and maintain the properties on a regular basis.”

The neighbors complained of an accumulation of waste and refuse, chemical pesticides and herbicides left in open containers, no maintenance of the grounds since last year and “serious disrepair of the church building.”

In addition, those who signed the petition said the police had been called five times in recent weeks to deal with vagrants using the property as a base and to deal with two different break-ins.

Patricia Doucette, South Portland’s director of code enforcement, said this week that while she had not seen the nuisance complaint, she had heard enough from neighbors to call Cafua and request a general cleanup of the grounds.

However, she also said, “A lot of the issues I heard about regarding vagrants, transients, etc., are police issues” unrelated to code enforcement.

– Kate Irish Collins

The former St. John the Evangelist Church in South Portland has been on the market for the past several years, ever since an initial redevelopment plan was scuttled by the city.

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