Brunswick bound: A new downtown plan and financing incentives spur activity
Photo/Tim Greenway
Cathy Barter of Brunswick's Downtown Master Plan Committee
Photo/Tim Greenway
The 52-room inn under construction at Maine Street Station
Motorists have always been challenged driving down Brunswick’s Maine Street — the widest downtown artery in the state — scanning continuously at two lanes of oncoming traffic, vehicles turning in and out of one-way streets and pedestrians who are as likely to be Bowdoin College students as retirees drawn to the town named in January by Money magazine as one of the top 25 places in the United States to retire.
Now cautious motorists have even more distractions: construction of a new hotel flanking the gateway to the town’s Maine Street Station project and scaffolding enveloping the former Grand City department store that, within a few weeks, will throw open its doors as the fourth and newest location of retailer Cool As A Moose. “There is a lot going on,” says Cathy Barter, a Key Private Bank relationship manager at the Maine Street office of KeyBank and a member of the town’s Downtown Master Plan Committee, which just concluded a two-year study. “A downtown is what makes a town, so this [activity] is good.”
Sparked in part by the closure of Brunswick Naval Air Station and the subsequent loss of 5,000 jobs, the group examined the economic vitality and livability of an area roughly encompassed by Maine Street, outer Pleasant Street and Mill Street, and submitted its report this winter. An implementation committee is being assembled by the town council to carry on the work and expects to convene in May.
Key to the report’s recommendations toward improving the downtown is enhancing the volume and variety of retail offerings to draw and keep people downtown, and stepped-up efforts to market those attractions. “We have 55 restaurants, all very diverse, within the downtown,” says Barter by way of example. “It was very difficult when we lost Grand City, which is why we worked so hard to make sure we could keep that space retail and why we’re so happy Cool As A Moose is coming.”
The tourist-focused retailer intends to open for business next month, says Caroline Kurrus, who handles communications and logistics for Cool As A Moose and its affiliate, Artforms Inc., which screen prints apparel for Cool As A Moose and other customers such as L.L.Bean. The renovation project will not only create a lively shopping environment in the former five and dime, but also includes corporate offices and a production facility to make the T-shirts, sweatshirts and other novelty wear under the same roof.
“Kip wanted a place that would capture the imagination and have meaning for us,” says Kurrus of owner Kip Stone, who founded Artforms in 1988 and opened his first Cool As A Moose franchise in Freeport in 1999 before eventually buying the retailer outright. The site search took two years, she says. “That building and neighborhood spoke to all of us; Brunswick is such a resource-rich area.”
Although Stone is financing the project privately (he purchased the building for $450,000), he did explore some of the local development incentives, including community development block grants, but none were a good fit, says Kurrus.
But those incentives are part of the reason Barter expects the downtown master plan will avoid being relegated to a dusty shelf somewhere; one of its basic tenets — establishing alternative funding sources — has already been approved and implemented by the town. Last year, the Maine Development Foundation accepted Brunswick into its Maine Downtown Network, teeing the town up to apply for grants from the MDF Main Street Maine program once funding is replenished. More importantly, the town established a downtown tax increment financing district to funnel revenue toward projects that fall within the district’s boundaries (roughly along Maine Street between Maine Street Station and Fort Andross).
The TIF district’s first applicant, JHR Development, which is building a $14 million, 52-room inn at Maine Street Station, has been controversial. If JHR complies with the TIF requirements, it will be rebated 100% of its property taxes for five years, and 50% for another 10 years, providing about $900,000 in tax relief overall. The TIF would also allow the town to recover its $2.1 million investment in infrastructure in the development and to create a fund for further approved development within the district. Overall benefit to the town, based on a 30-year projection and a $20-$25 million investment by JHR Development, is $16.1 million, according to the TIF application.
The arrangement with JHR Development prompted cries of foul from competing hoteliers in the area, who have challenged the TIF in court. Late last month, Cumberland County Superior Court Justice Nancy Mills dismissed a suit filed by rival hoteliers Linwood Austin and Peter Anastos and others, who claimed among other things that the town had failed to adequately consider the effects of the TIF on other businesses. “We knew it was going to be controversial, but we felt it was an essential tool to help strengthen the downtown,” says Barter.
John Gerard, president and principal broker at Gerard Commercial Properties in Brunswick, also served on the downtown master plan committee. He was an early advocate of establishing a downtown TIF district as a mechanism to help fund improvements there without creating an adverse impact on tax dollars. “I think a lot of what’s inhibiting us to do things with the TIF program is a weak economy; we only have the Maine Street Station project so far,” he says. “But we have a mechanism in place now and that’s a very positive asset to implement the [master downtown] plan.”
Year-round appeal
Maine Street Station holds a place of prominence in the downtown plan. The multi-use development includes the new hotel, a visitor’s center, new office, retail and restaurant space, housing and, at the center of it all, a train depot for Amtrak’s Downeaster. An extension from Portland to Brunswick is expected to deliver 36,500 passengers annually, once it opens in 2012.
The town is already laying out the welcome mat with a new marketing campaign devised by the Brunswick Downtown Association: It’s all here all year. The first glossy print ad is set to appear in the May issue of Down East magazine. “We are a coastal town, but our attractions are open year round — we’re trying to gear up for that push,” says Barter. She ticks off the winter farmers’ market in Fort Andross, the Joshua Chamberlain museum and ice skating on the mall, the green space wedged between Maine Street and historic Park Row, as examples of cooler weather activities.
The bane of many downtown plans is adequate parking, but Brunswick is trying to use new parking as an advantage to lure travelers. Located within Maine Street Station is a new surface parking lot and 37 on-street spaces to serve the businesses there and the train depot; a Concord Bus depot; the town’s new, low-cost bus shuttle, the Explorer; and an Enterprise car rental. “We’re trying to make this a destination, and this helps us move in that direction,” Barter says.
The most recent activity at Maine Street Station is construction of a 20,000-square-foot medical office building that will be home to Mid Coast Hospital’s walk-in center and adult primary care offices. The $5 million investment by the hospital is expected to open later this spring. “The development at Maine Street Station reinforces and cements for the foreseeable future the commercial viability of downtown Brunswick,” Gerard says.
Carol Coultas, Mainebiz editor, can be reached at ccoultas@mainebiz.biz.
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