🔒Hot property: After decades of decline, cities return to their downtown centers

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By the mid-1990s, Maine’s downtowns universally had a similar tired, empty-storefront feel.

Decades of new shopping districts on the outskirts of town, the vestiges of urban renewal and the loss of much of the state’s industrial base, which had been linked to downtown in many communities, had taken their toll.

By 2004, the State Planning Office had targeted revitalizing the state’s “vacant and forlorn” downtowns as a key to the state’s economy, but it warned in a report, “It took decades for our downtowns to deteriorate, and there are no overnight successes.”

Those efforts have become the seeds of new partnerships and efforts that are bringing life to downtowns across the state. The focus has grown in recent years, as both millennials and boomers want to live in or near urban cores that are walkable and full of things to do.

“All my professional life in planning, dating back to the ‘70s, was about slowing the exodus from urban areas,” says Frank O’Hara, a planning consultant. “The ‘cost of sprawl’ was the catch-phrase for my generation.”

O’Hara says that’s what Maine’s Growth Management Act was all about. Enacted in 1988, the plan called for every municipality to have a comprehensive plan by 1996 that designated growth areas for commercial, industrial and residential development and required land use ordinances. Around the same time, in 1999, the Main Street Maine program of the Maine Development Foundation formed. The program helps communities forge private-public partnerships that aim to redevelop downtowns.

With 10 member cities, the program by 2015 had spurred $284.4 million reinvestment in the 10 member communities, with a net gain of 1,184 full-time jobs, 937 building rehabilitations and improvements and a reinvestment ratio of $23.08 for every $1 spent.

A downtown affiliate program was added two years ago, which now has 17 members. Both programs follow the approach of the National Main Street Center, which includes public/private partnerships with local government, downtown businesses and residents.

“This approach has a reputation as one of the most powerful economic development tools in the nation for vibrant, healthy downtowns resulting in job creation, business growth, building rehabilitation and cultural enhancement,” Main Street Maine says on its website.

Municipalities are also finding other ways to bring new life to downtowns spurred by federal tax incentives, local programs and, increasingly, public-private partnerships.

Portland’s downtown has rebounded in recent years, and now faces a shortage of Class-A office space. New development — including headquarters buildings for Tilson, WEX Inc. and Covetrus — has stretched the downtown toward the East End and the Old Port.

In Bangor, Bangor Savings Bank, the state’s largest bank, has shown its commitment to the city by building a new headquarters along the waterfront.

Lewiston has spurred a revitalization of its key Lisbon Street corridor downtown by working with developers and small businesses.

In downtown Augusta, where businesses and apartments have been added at an unprecedented rate in the past four years, the effort is driven by an aggressive Downtown Alliance and incentives like the city’s Tipping Point program, which in partnership with Kennebec Savings Bank offers incentives for small businesses to renovate space and locate downtown.

In downtown Waterville, a $100 million investment by Colby College since 2015 has been a catalyst for other developers.

O’Hara says there is more work to be done, though.

“Now market flows have reversed, and planning must address affordable housing, congestion, lack of public transit,” he said. “And we’re too slow to react.”