© 2024 Maine Public | Registered 501(c)(3) EIN: 22-3171529
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Scroll down to see all available streams.

Portland's B&M factory may have changed ownership, but its iconic Christmas tree will remain

The B&M factory in 2017.
Brian Bechard
/
Maine Public file
The B&M factory in 2017. Its iconic flagpole-turned-Christmas-tree is just barely visible on the right side of the building's roof.

As holiday decorations go, it's pretty simple. A few strings of colored lights, stretched from the top of a pole to the roof below, making a cone shape, with a lit star on top.

It isn't nearly as elaborate as other holiday light displays you might see around Portland at this time of year, but the tree on the roof of the B&M Baked Beans plant has become a beloved symbol of the season.

What this Christmas tree does have is location. Next to Interstate 295, it's seen by thousands of commuters heading home in the early evening darkness, by walkers and joggers on the Back Cove trail and even by observers well across town. That visibility seems to have given the tree a following since it was first strung together sometime in the early 1980s.

"Looked like they repurposed a flagpole they put on top of the roof. And it seemed like a fun idea, I guess, according to a couple of management folks I talked to who were working there at the time," says Tyler Wallace, the B&M plant manager.

The tree would usually be lit most years around Thanksgiving and stay lit through New Year's. Wallace says it appeared to be a hit, which the folks at B&M could tell anytime the tree lighting was late.

"If our mechanical folks are having trouble getting it going, they're fueled usually by the pressure of the community, whether it be Maine Medical Center, which has a pretty good view of it, so we'll get calls from there. Members of the Deering community will reach out," he says.

In March of last year, the pandemic cast its shadow over Portland and the rest of the state.

"We had a call, almost simultaneous calls from Maine Medical and the City of Portland, saying, 'Hey, why don't we turn the tree on?'"

The tree was turned on and stayed lit until this summer, as COVID appeared to be receding. And then, on Aug. 31, the factory was sold.

The waterfront building would no longer manufacture baked beans, but become a business incubator for students of the Roux Institute, a high-tech graduate study and research entity.

With workers focused on decommissioning the plant, the tree did not get lit this Thanksgiving. But a week ago, the director of the institute told B&M officials he thought the tree could be an important symbol of the transition to the building's future use.

"I mean they couldn't wait to get up there and get it lit," says Chuck Hewitt, who heads the Initiative for Digital Engineering and Life Sciences, or IDEALS, the nonprofit that created the Roux Institute. "I think the Christmas tree just made the holiday season for so many people. That site is visible for miles around and I just think it's something that means a lot to a lot of people."

That means while the graduate students will come and go in the years ahead, Hewett says he hopes the lighted tree, now a fixture of Portland's holiday season, will be there for decades to come.