(Editor’s note: Looking Back is a new weekly column including news items reported 10 years ago in The Current, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.)

Issue of Oct. 4, 2001

In Cape Elizabeth, land values are often nearly double the national average. And despite national economic shakiness even before Sept. 11, the town’s real estate market is more than holding its own.

In 1990, the median price of a home in Maine was $87,400, according to the U.S. Census, and Cape Elizabeth’s median price was more than twice that, at $168,500. Town-level details are not yet available from the U.S. Census Bureau for the year 2000, but local realtors say Cape Elizabeth’s average house-closing price is $309,713.

“I think the world stood still for a couple of days (after Sept. 11),” said Tom Tinsman of the ERA 1 Agency office in Cape Elizabeth, “but after that the normal amount of interest has come out.”

While there isn’t much for sale in town, that’s mainly because what there is moves quickly, said Kathy Duca of Harnden Beecher Coldwell Banker’s Cape Elizabeth office.

The Cape Elizabeth School Board will meet Tuesday evening to finalize the committee that will oversee planning for the $6 million renovation project up for referendum on the May 2002 ballot.

The project comes as a result of the sizable enrollment in the sixth and eighth grades, each of which has about 50 more students than the average grade level in Cape Elizabeth, said School Board member Marie Prager.

The repercussions will spread throughout the district. Prager, who also chairs the building project committee, said that even if enrollment remains flat overall, the size of those two classes will put stress on the high school’s classrooms. The high school was built in 1969 and has never been fully renovated, Prager said.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 were on the minds of students at Scarborough High School last Thursday as they visited with U.S. Congressman Tom Allen.

Allen, a Democrat, made an hourlong stop in Scarborough and spoke with students from Todd Beaudoin’s America I class, and Paul Ledman’s America II class.

The students, mostly sophomores and juniors, peppered Allen with questions about what is happening at the congressional level regarding the terrorists attacks, and what the United States should do about them.

One student said, “We’re the strongest country in the world. I don’t understand why we don’t have bin Laden in our possession right now. Why can’t we just go in and get him?”

Allen responded by telling the student that we don’t know where he is at any given time.

He never sleeps in the same place twice and it’s almost impossible to infiltrate these groups.”

Allen told the students that bin Laden and other groups like his are “steeped in Islamic ideology.”

“These people are committed terrorists. They just follow orders, it is not even clear that the 19 men who hijacked the planes ever met together to make plans,” Allen said. Allen also warned against killing bin Laden, saying that we shouldn’t make him into a martyr.

Students asked Allen about who was responsible for the attacks and how and where the United States should retaliate. One student argued that we should be careful to only retaliate against the people responsible and not harm innocent civilians.

Allen said that if the U.S. had a clear target, there probably would have been some missile strikes by now.

“The government is having a hard time deciding who to strike and where,” Allen said. “The terrorist training camps in Afghanistan are all empty.”

The Cape Elizabeth Police Department’s new home is taking shape and should be enclosed by winter, Chief Neil Williams said.

The new building, on the site of the old police and fire station on Ocean House Road in the town center, will have 9,300 square feet of space. That is roughly the same size as the old building, but with the fire department in its new station across Jordan Way, “We’re going to have it all to ourselves,” Williams said.