‘Go Back To Where You Came From:’ Wealth Rules When It Comes To Beach Access In Rich Maine Town

A Maine coastal community known as much for its money as its breathtaking shoreline has decided if you don’t live there you can’t use its public beach.

Put down Cape Elizabeth, Maine as a town so rich it doesn’t have to care.

Municipal officials under the cover of darkness (also known as winter) have decided to ban all parking near Cliff House Beach.

First they restricted nonresident parking on Sea View Avenue leading down to the beach, so visitors had to find parking on Shore Road.

Now they’ve gone a step further – prohibiting visitor parking along Shore Road and surrounding streets.

“These changes are intended exclusively to keep out people who do not own property in the Cape Elizabeth area,” says Sebastian Shames, a sculptor, banker and long-time Portland resident.

“Shore Road commands some of the highest waterfront property values in southern Maine, and preventing people they deem unworthy of enjoying the same access to the waterfront on public land is elitist and wrong,” Shames added.

He shared his disgust in a letter to town councilors and to a local newspaper editor.

Town officials citing pedestrian safety as the need to ban parking avoided less-aggressive alternatives such as special crosswalks or reducing the speed limit.

Shames calls it “a thinly veiled excuse to privatize one of the few remaining public beaches in Cape Elizabeth, making it illegal for residents from surrounding towns to park there.”

Council Chair Elizabeth Scifres wrote Shames claiming that a “redesign and reconstruction of Shore Road is still on the horizon,” that the parking issue is likely to be “revisited.”

He’s not buying it for a minute.

“When the aim is so clearly exclusivity, I find it astounding that the council thinks it can pull the wool over our eyes enough to believe that its goal is traffic safety,” Shames wrote.

By limiting parking at Cliff House Beach, cape officials have sent an unmistakable message – the goal is privacy and exclusivity, not safety.