James J. Fitzpatrick Stadium

The soil went out before the team came in. In the summer of 2024, ahead of the arrival of Portland Hearts of Pine , contractors hauled away 850 cubic yards of earth contaminated with arsenic and lead.

It has been in use since October 1931, when Portland and Deering high schools met here in the first match. The original drawings imagined a bowl for 10,000 to 20,000; what opened was considerably smaller. Fitzpatrick — before that, plainly, Portland Stadium.

In 2001, a $1.4m job took out the grass for FieldTurf and laid a rubber track. In 2010, $950,000 went on new stands, split 3,500 on the home side and 2,500 opposite. In 2015, the artificial surface was lifted again and replaced.

The 2024 work was different in scale: more than $2.5m from the club, a new surface with a shock pad beneath it, LED floodlights, two dressing rooms built from scratch, a press box put back into order.

The stadium still belongs to Portland High School's teams, and once, in 1948, to a baseball side, the Portland Pilots.