Brewer banks on a waterfront trail and a new development plan to turn its downtown into an Old Port

In Brewer's waterfront downtown, Tracey Marceron's version of a torpedo factory is the new kid on the block. Surrounded by a pawn and gun shop, an appliance store, a used instrument shop and a kiln factory, Marceron's "Between Friends" arts center and gift shop, with its white vinyl siding and big, cheery sign, looks like it was beamed here from the arts-saturated streets of downtown Camden.

One of the few passersby on these side streets might wonder what Marceron was thinking opening an arts center — with two floors of theatre, studio space and classrooms — that thrives on a hip scene, in a part of town that has never been keen on hip. If they knew Marceron had bet her life savings and her house on this business modeled on the famous Torpedo Factory Arts Center in Alexandria, Va., they might advise Marceron to take it slow — she's only been open for four months, why run classes and theatre shows so soon? Marceron's vision might seem desperate — too much, too soon, too impossible — but the rapid pace of change within the walls of Marceron's downtown dream reflect a waterfront rebirth throughout Brewer that's lately picking up steam.

After decades of unorganized growth, Brewer's two-mile stretch of waterfront land along the Penobscot River is today a run-of-the-mill strip of chain stores, small industrial buildings and vacant warehouses. Enormous trucks blow by the few pedestrians brave enough to walk the busy corridor. Much of the shorefront is so overgrown you couldn't touch water if you tried, and only recently has the water become clean enough that touching it wouldn't be a bad idea. Unlike visitors to shopping meccas like Freeport and Portland's Old Port, few come to Brewer to appreciate the shops and the view.

But Cianbro Corp.'s plans to employ 500 people at Brewer's Eastern Fine Paper mill site and a new strategy to target prospective businesses are giving this neglected strip of prime real estate some prime-time momentum.

Pittsfield construction behemoth Cianbro announced in June that it would use the dormant Eastern Fine Paper mill on South Main Street to build pre-fabricated module structures. The site is expected to be operational by April 2008, and the hundreds of workers it will employ will generate consumer traffic the likes of which that end of town hasn't seen since the pulp and paper mill was going strong in the 1960s and 70s.

Once the modular facility is up and running, D'arcy Main-Boyington, the city's economic development director, says her office will be able to return much of its attention to transforming Brewer's rough waterfront into the next Old Port. She stresses this development will be strategic, something that had been in short supply throughout most of the waterfront's development history, and based on bringing new businesses to the neighborhood along Brewer's South Main Street, known as the downtown, where Marceron opened Between Friends.

"If we can really try to create a lot of momentum in a small area, we think that will work successfully as a catalyst [for the rest of the waterfront]," says Main-Boyington.

Business owners like Marceron are betting their future on what this waterfront might become. And as the city embarks on its version of an extreme makeover, Main-Boyington intends to make sure it avoids some of the vagaries that stalled its growth for so long.

Charting a course

The immediate future of Brewer's waterfront depends on two things — new entrepreneurs and old stories.

In 2000, the city completed its "Brewer Waterfront Redevelopment Plan," a 173-page opus on what the waterfront could be that was the city's first real effort to plan development along its shore. Prepared by a team of consultants that included the same landscape architect used to draft Bangor's waterfront plan, the report calls the city's shore a "vastly underused and underutilized resource" and the 200-year old riverfront downtown an area whose "outdated buildings, a lack of unusual retail businesses, and industrial uses mixed in with commercial and retail made for an unexciting combination."

The consultants suggested more open space, consumer-friendly businesses and mid- to high-range housing options along the waterfront, but the idea that the city decided to prioritize was one that was both formative and relatively easy to pull off — a riverfront path for exercise, aesthetics and education called the Brewer Waterfront History Trail, with outdoor exhibits on Brewer history that would be built along the water. The theory is consumers and businesses interested in health and wellness will be attracted to the city by the trail and the river, and, as with Portland's jogging trail along its Back Cove, a new culture of health-conscious professionals and tourists will come to town for a jog, a night over, a shopping binge.

The city hopes to complete a $4 million project to stabilize the shoreline by the end of this fall. Once erosion is slowed, Main-Boyington says Brewer can begin building the trail with what she expects will be a combination of grant money and city dollars.

The second portion of the plan will levy the trail — or the promise of the trail — to bring businesses to waterfront Brewer like Tom and Mary McGary's spa and salon, Balance Hair and Body, which since February 2006 has operated out of a remodeled wood-frame home on South Main Street surrounded by a Save-A-Lot supermarket, an empty warehouse and a handful of small businesses.

On a recent afternoon, Mary McGary looked out of the window of her sleek, gold-accented waiting room onto an empty sidewalk. An 18-wheeler rumbled by carrying foundation-sized cement blocks. Someday, McGary said, she'd like to see a natural foods market where the Save- A-Lot sits, and neighboring boutiques that will support the kind of foot traffic her business needs. If Main-Boyington can pull off planning the historically unplanned, McGary believes, her frontier settlement will soon be centrally located.

"We're looking at a return on our investment in 10 or 15 years, with all the talk that's been happening with riverfront development," she says. "It depends on getting the right business people here who have the right ideas, not just for now, but for the future."

But Brewer's waterfront intentions are hemmed in by finances. While across the river Bangor has had the money to buy back its waterfront parcel by parcel, Brewer, a city of roughly 9,000 residents, can't afford that luxury. Instead, the city has to convince waterfront businesses to move inland if they don't need to be along the waterfront, and then must find appropriate replacements to fill those gaps. It's a slow process.

Business bait

Main-Boyington praises the McGarys for taking the plunge early and says the end of South Main where the McGarys work will likely experience a spontaneous renaissance if Cianbro opens its modular manufacturing complex at the nearby Eastern Fine Paper mill next spring. For now, Main-Boyington's focus is on Marceron's end of town along North Main, in the five or so blocks making up Brewer's historic downtown.

Main-Boyington's first goal for the downtown is to get smart about attracting businesses. In June, she opted not to renew the contract of the city's former consultant, Bartram and Cochran of Hartford, Conn., in part because the general come-to-Brewer business pitch they had used for years had been successful only once, with the Muddy Rudder Restaurant on South Main. Main-Boyington hired Orono consultant Ron Cote to study the city's market demographics to draft what she believes is Brewer's first strategic marketing plan.

"It's almost all industrial," says Cote of the downtown. "[There is] some retail, some vacancy. To be blunt, it hasn't received the attention that we had hoped it would have."

Cote says he wants to attract new businesses that support the lifestyle the waterfront trail will encourage, like outdoor sporting goods stores and health and wellness boutiques. The Penobscot River, which was so polluted through the 1940s residents built houses facing away from the shoreline, is now clean enough to support water sports.

"We have something of a concept," says Cote. "The concept is using the trail as the focal point. The trail gives us a reason to draw businesses."

In October, Cote will poll Brewer residents and workers about their shopping and spending habits to figure out how the city can best retain their consumer dollars. He hopes to have the results ready for Main-Boyington's review this December and the strategic plan in her hands in February. Main-Boyington, who became the director of the city's economic development office in 2006, isn't aware of a similar market study ever being conducted in Brewer.

The strategic plan will be used to woo new businesses, especially first-time entrepreneurs from incubators like the one at the University of Maine at Orono. "We want to make a real effort to bring in those start-ups because they add a certain vibrancy and energy that you don't get from other businesses," says Main-Boyington. "From what I've seen so far, the buzz coming out of the University of Maine is a lot of entrepreneurs want to stay in the Bangor area."

Main-Boyington's plan to turn the downtown into a walkable center of commerce, fashion and wellness goes beyond the market study. Cote will soon be dispatched to talk with business owners who were unsuccessfully courted since 2000 about why they didn't move to Brewer and to interview businesses who were early movers into places like the Old Port about why they stuck around during the early years. Last year, the city's economic development office launched Brewer Business Resources, a program that offers free support to new entrepreneurs to improve their chance of long-term success.

Untapped potential

Marceron is exactly the kind of entrepreneur Main-Boyington has her eye on. A one-woman dynamo who raised two children and cared for her ailing grandmother while running an online business, teaching art classes, working as a classroom coordinator at the A.C. Moore arts and crafts store in Bangor, and filming weekly craft segments for the WABI morning news, Marceron, 43, is convinced Brewer could use a little creative juice. In March, Marceron and her husband bought the 160-year old former hardware store at 39 Center St. for $150,000, a discount price Marceron was able to clinch by convincing a local bank to lend her the money and closing the deal in only a month.

"This area traditionally, in my point of view, has been tattoo parlors, pawn shops," she says, sitting on a leather couch in the craft-cluttered second floor of Between Friends. "And there's nothing wrong with those businesses, but they aren't child-oriented. And an area like Brewer has so much potential if you open businesses for children."

Marceron says she would have opened Between Friends even if nothing were planned for the waterfront, but she says it's helpful to know the area is likely to change to better accommodate her business. Shortly after opening the arts center, she says she spoke with Main-Boyington about modeling Between Friends on the Torpedo Factory in Virginia and was surprised when Main-Boyington's eyes lit up. Main-Boyington had toured the Torpedo Factory and understood Marceron's plan to bring affordable arts programs to Brewer, which gives Marceron hope that 10 years from now she won't worry about whether her neighbor across the street will leave a broken window unrepaired for months, or whether the person who buys the building on her block will lease it to a dive bar.

"I hope it looks like Camden," muses Marceron of the waterfront's future. "I hope it looks like Portland. There's no reason it can't be. It should not have become this run down. I don't know why everybody says it doesn't matter [what happens to the waterfront]. It does matter."