🔒‘Where the artists go, Realtors will follow’ and other ideas for economic development

I got a call this week from Mike Hurley, former mayor of Belfast and the owner of several businesses there.

Hurley, a pioneer in Belfast's resurgence when he opened the Belfast Café in 1979, is turning 65 and planning to sell one of his businesses.

Hurley announced June 8 that the Colonial Theatre — the downtown movie theater that dates to 1912 and was refurbished by Hurley in 1995 — is on the market for $2.75 million. It's a fixture downtown. One summer, my wife and teenage girls dragged me to see “Eat Pray Love” in that theater — and I loved it, I might add. Hurley expects a buyer would want to keep the business going as a movie theater, saying it's been “refurbished A-to-Z,” and the projection equipment is now digital.

“We've gotten some calls,” Hurley tells me by phone, adding: “People ask if I'm leaving town. No.”

Hurley's journey mirrors that of Belfast, whose downtown and waterfront resurgence has been a model of economic development in Maine. When he arrived in the late '70s, the chicken-processing plants spewed raw waste into the harbor. He opened the Belfast Café reasoning that back-to-landers would stop in after visiting the surging Belfast Co-op, which opened its first store-front location in 1976. (Hurley eventually got out of the restaurant business, and the former café is now the site of the Parent Gallery, at 92 Main St.)

“Within four or five months of us opening, the first chicken plant closed,” he recalls. “At the time, there were 30 vacancies in the downtown. If you saw three cars, you'd wonder what was going on. The unemployment rate in Waldo County was 19%. There was an incentive to be on welfare or part of the underground economy.”

Hurley said he's never forgotten an economic development conference he attended in Portland in the late '70s. One speaker argued that downtrodden towns should focus on building the creative economy.

“The point was, 'Where the artists go, Realtors will follow,'” Hurley says.

He'll be the first to say that Belfast's resurgence was greatly aided by investment from MBNA. Even as MBNA (and eventually Bank of America) scaled down the presence in Belfast, the weaning was gradual enough that Belfast adjusted.

Belfast's downtown has benefitted from the addition of bookstores, restaurants and a revitalized waterfront, which has been enhanced not just by walking paths but also by a working boatyard, Front Street Shipyard. Amanda Rector, Maine's state economist, was asked earlier this year, “Where in Maine are they getting it right?” In Belfast, she replied.

Hurley's own path didn't necessarily follow the “where the artists go” plan. Despite owning a restaurant and movie theater, he's broadly diversified across industries.

Coastal Distribution Inc., which is based at 93 Main St., has manufactured more than 30 million of the Mini Scraper, a household device that comes in handy in scraping your old dump sticker off the windshield. Bay City Cargo sells old theater marquee letters and commercial signage. Another business produces oversized fiberglass objects: a 1,500-pound Wally mascot-bobblehead for Fenway Park, a life-sized Tommy Lasorda bobblehead for the Los Angeles Dodgers, the world's largest longhorn steer for the University of Texas.

I had a chance to meet Hurley at a Mainebiz “On the Road” event in Belfast a year ago. I was struck by his energy and outlook. He's jumped at opportunities, both on land and on the water. He's started and sold a variety of businesses (including a window-washing firm). He imported jewelry from Morocco. He served as mayor for eight years and council for seven years. He's sailed across the Atlantic, twice, in a 40-foot boat.

“I count that among the best experiences of my life,” he says.