Email this page
Print this page
del.icio.us
digg
Feed
It’s 10:30 at night in downtown Bangor. A show at the Penobscot Theatre has just ended, and thirsty patrons, their heads abuzz with music and drama and dialogue, pour onto the Main Street sidewalk. In past years most of them would have headed straight to their cars and driven home. They would have had little choice, for downtown doors closed early.
But times change, and tonight’s audience walks to one of three Irish pubs, where they may be joined later by members of the cast and crew for drinks, a bite to eat, and a bit of conversation. Afterwards, some of them will drive off into the night, but others will walk to their apartments on the upper floors of the refurbished historic buildings that formed the city’s commercial hub in the days before box stores and shopping malls. Bangor’s downtown revival is mirrored by similar success stories around the state. Performing arts venues, restaurants, and locally owned businesses are transforming the formerly forlorn faces of downtowns large and small.
Scott Levy, producing artistic director at the Penobscot Theatre for the past three years, knows that a key to any downtown revival, especially at night, is having something exciting to do. “Having a live entertainment venue is imperative to the health of a downtown district,” says Levy, who is from New York and minored in urban studies in college. “Historically, theaters moved into neighborhoods first, and the people followed.”
The other essential part of the nightlife success formula, Levy says, is food and drink. Since he came to Bangor, he’s seen Paddy Murphy’s and Cristor’s join longtime downtown pub the Whig and Courier as magnets for the after-show crowd. Several ethnic restaurants, cafés, and gourmet eateries now round out the choices for dinner before theater performances or River City Cinema-sponsored films. According to the non-profit group Americans for the Arts, every theater ticket sold brings an additional $24 into the surrounding retail area. “A lot of people are coming for more than just the shows,” Levy says. “They’re coming for a night on the town.”
Rod McKay, the city’s director of community and economic development since 1971, is also encouraged by recent changes. Though downtown revitalization is a process that started in the late ’60s with urban renewal, he says the most visible development began in the late ’90s. “In the last 10 years, we’ve seen a lot of reinvestment in sustainable uses,” McKay says. “You’re starting to see a lot of specialty businesses downtown that have staying power, and attract a different type of shopper than at the mall.”
One such business is Epic Sports, which has occupied the lower floors of the W. T. Grant building for the past 10 years. Owner Brad Ryder originally opened the business as a franchise of Bar Harbor-based Cadillac Mountain Sports, which now also operates a store in downtown Ellsworth. Locating in downtown districts, Ryder says, was part of the company’s philosophy. “If I had gone out to the mall, their name would not have come with me,” he says.
In what he describes as an amicable parting, Ryder changed the name of the store and went into business for himself at the conclusion of his six-year franchise agreement. Business in downtown Bangor has been good, he says. “You do feel like you’re part of a community,” he says. Another downtown advantage is the retail space itself, with a mezzanine level and 20-foot ceilings, which allow for creative displays of merchandise. “We’ve got 13,000 square feet here,” Ryder says. “I don’t know of any available space like this out by the mall.”
The upper floors of the former department store building are now occupied by offices for the University of Maine System, which relocated some 120 employees two years ago from its offices at the former air force base in a property swap with the city. Eastern Maine Development Corporation (EMDC) recently moved its 50 employees into another nearby historic building, Norumbega Hall. That building also houses the University of Maine Museum of Art (UMMA).
All this business activity means more customers for downtown restaurants and shops, and an expansion of options. But businesses are only a part of the downtown story. Many old buildings have been remodeled for residential use. “Since 1980, we’ve created more than 500 units of housing downtown,” McKay says. “Most of that has been in the past 10 years.”
Sally Bilancia, business and development officer with the Department of Economic and Community Development, explains the downtown housing boom. “First, federal funds are available for creating housing. Second, it draws residents into downtown who will then use the services on the street level.”
Those services now include Giacomo’s Groceria, which opened across the street from Epic Sports in December. The Italian grocery boasts a deli, a beer and wine selection, and an assortment of food items. Previously, the closest place to buy groceries was the Shaw’s supermarket, itself a testament to smart city planning. Bangor received the John J. Gunther Blue Ribbon Practices in Community Development Award for improving the Shaw’s site, which had been abandoned by other grocers. Shaw’s is now poised to reap new business from the ongoing development of the waterfront and the southern end of Main Street.
“Ten years ago, you could have had the downtown-vacant-building festival in Bangor,” McKay says. “Now you’ve got the mindset of people wanting to be where the activity is, and the activity is downtown.”
The same positive mindset has quietly transformed downtown Ellsworth into a year-round cultural and shopping hotspot. Ken Schweikert, owner of the Ellsworth Grasshopper Shop store, believes courthouses, police stations, and other elements of a city’s infrastructure play crucial roles in keeping downtowns viable. “If a place has an identity, it has to come from downtown,” he says. “You need a critical mass of people who work downtown, and people who live downtown. If the courthouse moves, lawyers move, and everybody loses business.”
The Ellsworth Grasshopper Shop sits in the heart of the downtown district, at the former location of Willey’s Department Store. “All our stores are in downtowns, always have been,” Schweikert says. (The Bangor Grasshopper Shop, owned by his brother and sister-in-law, Rick and Laurie Schweikert, holds down a corner of the intersection of Hammond and Main Streets.) “We like to be an anchor store in a downtown. At the same time, we realize we’re not going to be successful without other businesses.”
Shoppers need to be fed and entertained, and landmarks like the Mex and the Grand Theatre help keep places like the Grasshopper Shop busy. One new neighbor is the Maine Grind, in the former Masonic Hall just up the street, across from the Grand. The lunch spot and coffeeshop, which also serves beer and wine, has become a gathering place for denizens of downtown. Leslie Harlow and her partner, Peter Rogers, purchased the building two years ago. “We both have an affinity for old buildings,” Harlow says. “It was a project waiting to happen.” The building also houses an artists’ cooperative, a dance studio, and a new 175-seat performing arts venue called Shangri-La.
Ellsworth is currently experiencing a construction boom in the “triangle” area where the routes from Bar Harbor and Washington County converge. Several large retail outlets, including Lowe’s and a Super Wal-Mart, are going up, accompanied by massive parking lots. “We’ll all benefit from that development,” Harlow admits, “but it’s nothing new. I mean, I could get the same stuff in Augusta. I think that having that development occur has really motivated people to protect the downtown.”
Peter Farnsworth and his wife, Leesa, of Striking Gold jewelers moved their store from the triangle area to downtown nearly four years ago, and have never regretted it. “It was a tremendous benefit for us to get as close to the heartbeat of a small city as possible,” he says. “We’re two walking blocks from Main Street, and we’re starting to see some residual walkers. It was the best thing we’ve ever done.”
As with Bangor and Ellsworth, traffic patterns play a major role in the vitality and character of Belfast’s downtown. Thirty-six miles to the west of Ellsworth, Belfast is also served by Route One, but in the 1960s a bypass was built around the downtown area, creating a central business district friendly to bicyclists and pedestrians. Belfast’s downtown is billing itself as a destination, with large signs on Route One indicating the way to the waterfront, and people who take the turn find one of the most inviting, walkable downtowns on the midcoast.
It wasn’t always this way. Over the past several decades, Belfast has seen sea changes in its economy. Once known as the poultry-processing center of the Maine coast, the town was virtually remade in the 1990s by credit-card giant MBNA (now Bank of America), and now attracts large numbers of tourists and summer visitors to its bustling waterfront. Though a proposed marina and condominium project on the site of the former Stinson’s sardine cannery has stalled, the harbor, at the mouth of the Passagassawakeag River, has become a destination for pleasure boats and small cruise ships. “The harbor’s probably a pretty good indicator of the town’s overall health,” says Wayne Marshall, Belfast city planner. “We’ve got more than 300 moorings in the river, and in the summer, they’re pretty much all occupied.”
The 2006 completion of the Belfast Footbridge has brought people on two sides of the Passy together, adding a new dimension to the city’s pedestrian-friendly waterfront. As with Bangor, many of Belfast’s downtown buidings’ upper floors are now available as residences.
The last essential piece of a thriving downtown residential district—a place to get groceries—has been in place for years. The Belfast Co-op, founded in 1973, has been a downtown anchor since it moved into its present location 15 years ago. “We’ve been in three locations, all downtown, each one bigger than the last,” says operations manager Ronald “Goldy” Goldstein.
From its beginnings as a natural-foods outlet, the co-op has expanded into a year-round gathering place and educational center, with a café, in-house herbalist, children’s center, and evening classes in nutrition and health.
Belfast also has a thriving downtown cultural scene. The Colonial Theatre, which opened the day the Titanic went down, is a hub for movies and special events, including a recent live comedy festival. The Belfast Maskers Community Theater stages several shows throughout the year, many of them on the Belfast waterfront. The active little city has a surprising number of shops and restaurants, and an impressive array of art galleries. Though it’s not located downtown, the city’s Hutchinson Center, a satellite learning center of the University of Maine, has become an important part of Belfast’s attraction, especially for professionals and retirees. “There’s a tremendous amount of cultural energy here,” says John Burgess, director of the Belfast Area Chamber of Commerce. “Once they get here, visitors fall in love with this place. And every year some of those visitors turn into permanent residents.”
The tourist business is big business to Belfast, which experiences more seasonal fluctuations than Bangor or even Ellsworth. “What you see in February and what you see in July are two different worlds,” Wayne Marshall says. Goldy Goldstein estimates that his co-op business improves by a third in the summer, thanks to members from the nearby seasonal communities of Bayside and Islesboro. “Many stores stay open year-round to keep their good loyal customers locally,” Marshall says, “but they’re doing 70% of their business in an eight to 10 week period.”
Maximizing the number of summer dollars is also important for Ellsworth, which serves as the gateway to Bar Harbor. For many years, the vast majority of travelers tooled straight through Route One without turning toward downtown. That is changing—and it’s not only summer visitors who are discovering the treasures on Main Street. Canadian shoppers are becoming a bigger piece of the downtown Ellsworth pie, year-round. “We’re starting to get a lot of business from people from New Brunswick,” Leslie Harlow says. “We’re right on Route One, and Ellsworth is the first big town they come to after Machias. By the time they get here, they’re ready for a bite to eat.”
Canadian visitors have long been important to Bangor’s vitality—and the recent strength of the Canadian dollar makes the Queen City even more attractive. Bangor’s role as the closest Maine city to the Maritimes was a key factor in the decision to build the Hollywood Slots Hotel and Raceway complex, which will serve as the new southern gateway to downtown Bangor. The 136,885-square-foot gaming facility is scheduled to open in July 2008; the accompanying seven-story, 150-room hotel is slated to open one month later. A four-story parking garage is also in the works.
Robert Frank, a principal at WBRC Architects-Engineers, sees this and other construction projects as reason for optimism, even in the midst of a possible national recession. “The weak U.S. dollar in some ways works to our advantage, making us that much more attractive to visitors from Canada,” Frank says. Two other Bangor hotel projects are now under construction, as are more area retail expansions. All, in Frank’s view, are positive signs for the Bangor region. “Companies don’t make these kinds of investments in an area without a high confidence level,” he says.
Downtown Bangor has proved its mettle at attracting visitors from both sides of the border with the American Folk Festival, which takes places in late August along the ever-changing waterfront. The event has also helped citizens realize the need for the city to implement its master plan for the waterfront, which includes a mile-long walkway along the river, a new auditorium and convention center, and at least one more downtown hotel. “You can’t draw people to a large conference arena without good hotel rooms nearby,” Sally Bilancia says.
Downtown hotel rooms, in turn, mean more people at venues such as the theater, museums, stores, and restaurants. “The state of downtown,” Rod McKay says, “is a good indicator of what a community thinks of itself.”
These days Bangor—and Ellsworth and Belfast—appear to be enjoying a hard-earned dose of self-esteem.
But times change, and tonight’s audience walks to one of three Irish pubs, where they may be joined later by members of the cast and crew for drinks, a bite to eat, and a bit of conversation. Afterwards, some of them will drive off into the night, but others will walk to their apartments on the upper floors of the refurbished historic buildings that formed the city’s commercial hub in the days before box stores and shopping malls. Bangor’s downtown revival is mirrored by similar success stories around the state. Performing arts venues, restaurants, and locally owned businesses are transforming the formerly forlorn faces of downtowns large and small.
Advertisement
Scott Levy, producing artistic director at the Penobscot Theatre for the past three years, knows that a key to any downtown revival, especially at night, is having something exciting to do. “Having a live entertainment venue is imperative to the health of a downtown district,” says Levy, who is from New York and minored in urban studies in college. “Historically, theaters moved into neighborhoods first, and the people followed.”
The other essential part of the nightlife success formula, Levy says, is food and drink. Since he came to Bangor, he’s seen Paddy Murphy’s and Cristor’s join longtime downtown pub the Whig and Courier as magnets for the after-show crowd. Several ethnic restaurants, cafés, and gourmet eateries now round out the choices for dinner before theater performances or River City Cinema-sponsored films. According to the non-profit group Americans for the Arts, every theater ticket sold brings an additional $24 into the surrounding retail area. “A lot of people are coming for more than just the shows,” Levy says. “They’re coming for a night on the town.”
Rod McKay, the city’s director of community and economic development since 1971, is also encouraged by recent changes. Though downtown revitalization is a process that started in the late ’60s with urban renewal, he says the most visible development began in the late ’90s. “In the last 10 years, we’ve seen a lot of reinvestment in sustainable uses,” McKay says. “You’re starting to see a lot of specialty businesses downtown that have staying power, and attract a different type of shopper than at the mall.”
One such business is Epic Sports, which has occupied the lower floors of the W. T. Grant building for the past 10 years. Owner Brad Ryder originally opened the business as a franchise of Bar Harbor-based Cadillac Mountain Sports, which now also operates a store in downtown Ellsworth. Locating in downtown districts, Ryder says, was part of the company’s philosophy. “If I had gone out to the mall, their name would not have come with me,” he says.
In what he describes as an amicable parting, Ryder changed the name of the store and went into business for himself at the conclusion of his six-year franchise agreement. Business in downtown Bangor has been good, he says. “You do feel like you’re part of a community,” he says. Another downtown advantage is the retail space itself, with a mezzanine level and 20-foot ceilings, which allow for creative displays of merchandise. “We’ve got 13,000 square feet here,” Ryder says. “I don’t know of any available space like this out by the mall.”
The upper floors of the former department store building are now occupied by offices for the University of Maine System, which relocated some 120 employees two years ago from its offices at the former air force base in a property swap with the city. Eastern Maine Development Corporation (EMDC) recently moved its 50 employees into another nearby historic building, Norumbega Hall. That building also houses the University of Maine Museum of Art (UMMA).
All this business activity means more customers for downtown restaurants and shops, and an expansion of options. But businesses are only a part of the downtown story. Many old buildings have been remodeled for residential use. “Since 1980, we’ve created more than 500 units of housing downtown,” McKay says. “Most of that has been in the past 10 years.”
Sally Bilancia, business and development officer with the Department of Economic and Community Development, explains the downtown housing boom. “First, federal funds are available for creating housing. Second, it draws residents into downtown who will then use the services on the street level.”
Those services now include Giacomo’s Groceria, which opened across the street from Epic Sports in December. The Italian grocery boasts a deli, a beer and wine selection, and an assortment of food items. Previously, the closest place to buy groceries was the Shaw’s supermarket, itself a testament to smart city planning. Bangor received the John J. Gunther Blue Ribbon Practices in Community Development Award for improving the Shaw’s site, which had been abandoned by other grocers. Shaw’s is now poised to reap new business from the ongoing development of the waterfront and the southern end of Main Street.
“Ten years ago, you could have had the downtown-vacant-building festival in Bangor,” McKay says. “Now you’ve got the mindset of people wanting to be where the activity is, and the activity is downtown.”
The same positive mindset has quietly transformed downtown Ellsworth into a year-round cultural and shopping hotspot. Ken Schweikert, owner of the Ellsworth Grasshopper Shop store, believes courthouses, police stations, and other elements of a city’s infrastructure play crucial roles in keeping downtowns viable. “If a place has an identity, it has to come from downtown,” he says. “You need a critical mass of people who work downtown, and people who live downtown. If the courthouse moves, lawyers move, and everybody loses business.”
The Ellsworth Grasshopper Shop sits in the heart of the downtown district, at the former location of Willey’s Department Store. “All our stores are in downtowns, always have been,” Schweikert says. (The Bangor Grasshopper Shop, owned by his brother and sister-in-law, Rick and Laurie Schweikert, holds down a corner of the intersection of Hammond and Main Streets.) “We like to be an anchor store in a downtown. At the same time, we realize we’re not going to be successful without other businesses.”
Shoppers need to be fed and entertained, and landmarks like the Mex and the Grand Theatre help keep places like the Grasshopper Shop busy. One new neighbor is the Maine Grind, in the former Masonic Hall just up the street, across from the Grand. The lunch spot and coffeeshop, which also serves beer and wine, has become a gathering place for denizens of downtown. Leslie Harlow and her partner, Peter Rogers, purchased the building two years ago. “We both have an affinity for old buildings,” Harlow says. “It was a project waiting to happen.” The building also houses an artists’ cooperative, a dance studio, and a new 175-seat performing arts venue called Shangri-La.
Ellsworth is currently experiencing a construction boom in the “triangle” area where the routes from Bar Harbor and Washington County converge. Several large retail outlets, including Lowe’s and a Super Wal-Mart, are going up, accompanied by massive parking lots. “We’ll all benefit from that development,” Harlow admits, “but it’s nothing new. I mean, I could get the same stuff in Augusta. I think that having that development occur has really motivated people to protect the downtown.”
Peter Farnsworth and his wife, Leesa, of Striking Gold jewelers moved their store from the triangle area to downtown nearly four years ago, and have never regretted it. “It was a tremendous benefit for us to get as close to the heartbeat of a small city as possible,” he says. “We’re two walking blocks from Main Street, and we’re starting to see some residual walkers. It was the best thing we’ve ever done.”
As with Bangor and Ellsworth, traffic patterns play a major role in the vitality and character of Belfast’s downtown. Thirty-six miles to the west of Ellsworth, Belfast is also served by Route One, but in the 1960s a bypass was built around the downtown area, creating a central business district friendly to bicyclists and pedestrians. Belfast’s downtown is billing itself as a destination, with large signs on Route One indicating the way to the waterfront, and people who take the turn find one of the most inviting, walkable downtowns on the midcoast.
It wasn’t always this way. Over the past several decades, Belfast has seen sea changes in its economy. Once known as the poultry-processing center of the Maine coast, the town was virtually remade in the 1990s by credit-card giant MBNA (now Bank of America), and now attracts large numbers of tourists and summer visitors to its bustling waterfront. Though a proposed marina and condominium project on the site of the former Stinson’s sardine cannery has stalled, the harbor, at the mouth of the Passagassawakeag River, has become a destination for pleasure boats and small cruise ships. “The harbor’s probably a pretty good indicator of the town’s overall health,” says Wayne Marshall, Belfast city planner. “We’ve got more than 300 moorings in the river, and in the summer, they’re pretty much all occupied.”
The 2006 completion of the Belfast Footbridge has brought people on two sides of the Passy together, adding a new dimension to the city’s pedestrian-friendly waterfront. As with Bangor, many of Belfast’s downtown buidings’ upper floors are now available as residences.
The last essential piece of a thriving downtown residential district—a place to get groceries—has been in place for years. The Belfast Co-op, founded in 1973, has been a downtown anchor since it moved into its present location 15 years ago. “We’ve been in three locations, all downtown, each one bigger than the last,” says operations manager Ronald “Goldy” Goldstein.
From its beginnings as a natural-foods outlet, the co-op has expanded into a year-round gathering place and educational center, with a café, in-house herbalist, children’s center, and evening classes in nutrition and health.
Belfast also has a thriving downtown cultural scene. The Colonial Theatre, which opened the day the Titanic went down, is a hub for movies and special events, including a recent live comedy festival. The Belfast Maskers Community Theater stages several shows throughout the year, many of them on the Belfast waterfront. The active little city has a surprising number of shops and restaurants, and an impressive array of art galleries. Though it’s not located downtown, the city’s Hutchinson Center, a satellite learning center of the University of Maine, has become an important part of Belfast’s attraction, especially for professionals and retirees. “There’s a tremendous amount of cultural energy here,” says John Burgess, director of the Belfast Area Chamber of Commerce. “Once they get here, visitors fall in love with this place. And every year some of those visitors turn into permanent residents.”
The tourist business is big business to Belfast, which experiences more seasonal fluctuations than Bangor or even Ellsworth. “What you see in February and what you see in July are two different worlds,” Wayne Marshall says. Goldy Goldstein estimates that his co-op business improves by a third in the summer, thanks to members from the nearby seasonal communities of Bayside and Islesboro. “Many stores stay open year-round to keep their good loyal customers locally,” Marshall says, “but they’re doing 70% of their business in an eight to 10 week period.”
Maximizing the number of summer dollars is also important for Ellsworth, which serves as the gateway to Bar Harbor. For many years, the vast majority of travelers tooled straight through Route One without turning toward downtown. That is changing—and it’s not only summer visitors who are discovering the treasures on Main Street. Canadian shoppers are becoming a bigger piece of the downtown Ellsworth pie, year-round. “We’re starting to get a lot of business from people from New Brunswick,” Leslie Harlow says. “We’re right on Route One, and Ellsworth is the first big town they come to after Machias. By the time they get here, they’re ready for a bite to eat.”
Canadian visitors have long been important to Bangor’s vitality—and the recent strength of the Canadian dollar makes the Queen City even more attractive. Bangor’s role as the closest Maine city to the Maritimes was a key factor in the decision to build the Hollywood Slots Hotel and Raceway complex, which will serve as the new southern gateway to downtown Bangor. The 136,885-square-foot gaming facility is scheduled to open in July 2008; the accompanying seven-story, 150-room hotel is slated to open one month later. A four-story parking garage is also in the works.
Robert Frank, a principal at WBRC Architects-Engineers, sees this and other construction projects as reason for optimism, even in the midst of a possible national recession. “The weak U.S. dollar in some ways works to our advantage, making us that much more attractive to visitors from Canada,” Frank says. Two other Bangor hotel projects are now under construction, as are more area retail expansions. All, in Frank’s view, are positive signs for the Bangor region. “Companies don’t make these kinds of investments in an area without a high confidence level,” he says.
Downtown Bangor has proved its mettle at attracting visitors from both sides of the border with the American Folk Festival, which takes places in late August along the ever-changing waterfront. The event has also helped citizens realize the need for the city to implement its master plan for the waterfront, which includes a mile-long walkway along the river, a new auditorium and convention center, and at least one more downtown hotel. “You can’t draw people to a large conference arena without good hotel rooms nearby,” Sally Bilancia says.
Downtown hotel rooms, in turn, mean more people at venues such as the theater, museums, stores, and restaurants. “The state of downtown,” Rod McKay says, “is a good indicator of what a community thinks of itself.”
These days Bangor—and Ellsworth and Belfast—appear to be enjoying a hard-earned dose of self-esteem.
