Sometimes hard choices have to be made, and that's the case with this long-time Portland Landmark at the corner of Congress and St. John Street.

Since at least the 1970's, the red and blue Greyhound Bus logo has been painted on the brick wall of the building that has been home to Pizza Villa for over 50 years. It has greeted many people traveling into Portland's downtown by bus or car and is as much a part of Portland as the Time and Temperature sign.

The bus station has been closed for several years but the mural remains in a part of Portland that has stayed relatively undeveloped since Union Station was torn down and replaced with a strip mall in 1961. The bus station was built that same year, likely in response to the end of passenger rail service.

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The building however has fallen into disrepair. According to the Portland Press Herald, the mural is actually painted on what used to be an interior wall of a building that was demolished and the mural itself has caused water to seep into the brick making it structurally unsound and it needs to come down.

The building is now owned by Maine Health which acquired it when planning the massive expansion of Maine Medical Center. They plan to rebuild the wall and have a new mural painted on it. But will it be the Greyhound logo once again? That remains to be seen.

If you ask me, Maine Health should do what the owners of the Time and Temperature building did in 1999 when the sign atop the building needed to be replaced. The technology was more modern, but it still resembled the original Time and Temp sign that had been there since 1964. Paint a new mural with the Greyhound logo. Sure, the bus station is no longer there, but like the Time and Temp sign, it's just one of those things that makes Portland feel like home.

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