Thank you Norann Oleson for organizing the Weeding Party to remove the uninvited sprawling  weeds at our clay court today. Thanks also to Karen Stebbins, John Fitzgerald, Jim Oleson, and Martha Mitchell, who joined us for the fun. The court looks pretty good ready for the ocean deposited sand to be hauled away, and replaced with Har-Tru clay. Hopefully, one of the tennis court companies will show up next week to complete the mission..

On 12/18/2023, the Board awarded Lifetime Membership to Association Member, Polly Nodden, residing at 16 Elizabeth Road in recognition of her family’s land contribution. You can read Polly’s narration of the 1968 purchase of the current association lot at: 

https://fortunesrocks.org/History-of-Tennis-Court

We’ll try to see if we can resurrect What’s Cooking On the Rocks? 

One of our musically gifted members - John Redman = put a band together ("The Biddeford Beat"), and wrote a portfolio of original songs to perform. In particular, one of his songs entitled  "Old Fortunes Rocks"  is an adaptation of Old Cape Cod, a  hit by Patti Page in the 1950's with new lyrics fitting our neck of the woods. “I figured if Cape Cod had a song, Fortunes Rocks deserved one since it's at least as nice as Cape Cod is.”, says John. You can listen to the song by clicking on the link below. Vocals feature local singer Mesa Schubeck. 

12 - Old Fortunes Rocks.wav

We filed Permit by Rule Notification Form with Maine DEP on Oct. 20 along with the required documents including Fortunes Rocks Beach Sand Dune Geology Map, U.S.G.S. topography map of the location, site and building plans, and others. By rule, the permit is automatically granted after 14 days if DEP fails to respond. We were notified about the deficiencies in our application on the last day.  After two weeks of interaction with the agency, our DEP application was approved on Nov. 15.

We filed our Biddeford Planning Board application on Oct. 1 along with required documents including a cover letter, proposed site plan, 2D construction documents, and 3D visualization. In particular, our cover letter articulated movement of the footprint to the greatest practical extent without exasperating city's parking problems by moving the clubhouse movement 10' South, and rotating 8.5 degrees about the NE corner. On Oct. 18, Biddeford Planning Board held a public meeting to review our club’s proposal to build a new open air pavilion to serve as the clubhouse for our members. At the end of Mike Richard’s presentation, the Planning Board unanimously approved our proposal.