Maine’s third largest city is in the midst of a transformation.
As the major service center hub for northern and eastern parts of the state, Bangor has become attractive to developers who want to take advantage of prime retail space downtown. They’re also adding residential housing to the mix, which is changing the city’s vibe.
Five years ago, Bangor Community and Economic Development Director Tanya Emery says there were a dozen empty buildings in the heart of the city’s downtown that hadn’t welcomed a customer in years. Many were built after a 1911 fire devastated Bangor’s downtown and were in varying states of deterioration.
And downtown traffic? It was increasingly moving toward the outskirts of the city, in the direction of the Bangor Mall.
“They were a lot of loyalists who stayed true to downtown, but it really was something that people had written off for a number of years,” Emery says.
But over the last five years, there has been a wave of new investment in many of the old buildings. Last year, the city completed a $975,000 upgrade to the West Market Square area, which now features new restaurants and outdoor bistro seating.
Emery says redevelopment interest can be traced back to 2002, when Bangor first hosted the National Folk Festival.
“The folk festival was really something that helped people think about Bangor differently, just sort of universally,” Emery said. “People from all across the country all of a sudden were seeing Bangor as a destination for arts and culture, entertainment, and it made Bangor think a little bit differently about what Bangor was capable of pulling off.”
Emery says young professionals and retiring baby boomers are attracted to the city’s proximity to the great outdoors. And developers are responding by building new apartments over storefronts in the buildings they’re renovating.
Bari Newport lives above a Main Street burrito restaurant, where she says she feels right at home. She is only a few footsteps away from her job at the Penobscot Theater Co., where she works as the venue’s producing artistic director. She says likes the convenience of living downtown, but what she really appreciates are the tin walls and ceilings and spacious skylights.
Those were all features that convinced Abe and Heather Furth to buy the building as the site of their second restaurant. The Bangor couple also own Orono Brewing Co. During recent renovations they discovered that the building was the former home of the Bangor Cigar Manufacturing Co. that went out of business more than 50 years ago.
Abe Furth says Bangor’s old buildings are brimming with charm, like the gigantic cigar humidors that he was able to reincorporate in the apartments above 26 State St. He says young entrepreneurs see the value of combining commercial and residential space.
“There’s a lot of people who have the same goal, which is take these buildings that are fire dangers, that are totally unused and breathe new life into them, and that’s a combination of city government, the state and the local developers and the local folks that are doing all of the plumbing, electrical and build-out,” he says. “It’s a combination of talents that lets it happen.”
Adam Moskovitz is one of the major talent scouts in Bangor’s new wave of redevelopment. He recently purchased an entire six-building block downtown. Once a major commerce center in Bangor, the buildings are anchored by two unique properties: a bank with numerous vaults, carved woodwork and marble floors and walls and the 1892 Nichols Building, one of the few buildings to survive the fire, featuring a 3,000-square-foot third-floor ballroom, with carved balconies and a performance stage.
The block was on the market last fall with a price tag of nearly $2 million. Moskovitz competed with other bidders to purchase the property, and he included an essay that he thinks closed the deal for him. His subject? Why he’s uniquely qualified to deliver a development project that fits in Bangor.
“I just believe that I definitely have an affinity toward Bangor and I’ve done other projects in the past that have given back to the city, and basically I want to help grow or regrow or advance Bangor into the next century really,” he says.
With new living and commercial downtown spaces now available, all the developers need now are tenants. City officials such as Tanya Emery say hopes are high for the new downtown retail and apartments, but she also says it may take time for landlords to find the right tenants.