He's making Biddeford better:
"Biddeford’s mills at center of downtown revival" by Jim Baumer, Globe Correspondent February 08, 2015
BIDDEFORD, Maine — Like other mill towns dotting the landscape of New England, Biddeford’s economic fortunes tracked those of its textile industry and the mills bordering the Saco River. When textile manufacturing moved elsewhere — first south, then offshore — the city, particularly its downtown, languished.
For much of the past half-century, the hulking mill district cast a shadow, literally and figuratively, over Biddeford’s downtown, becoming a symbol of the city’s decline and decay. Even as places like Providence and Lowell, Mass., found new life in old mills, Biddeford struggled with abandoned industrial space and empty storefronts, so desperate for jobs and investment that it sited a trash-to-energy power plant in one of them, just a few blocks from City Hall.
Today, Biddeford’s 35-acre mill district is at the center of a downtown revival, housing an array of startups and small businesses — from manufacturers to a distillery to an art school — that together employ more than 400 workers. Two weeks ago, Portland Pie Co. opened a 130-seat restaurant in the sprawling Pepperell Mill complex. And less than a month ago, a Kennebunkport company completed the purchase of the 233,000-square-foot Lincoln Mill for a planned $50 million development that would include 100 market rate loft apartments and condominiums, and a 80-room luxury hotel.
“It’s an exciting time,” said Mayor Alan Casavant, a lifelong resident of the city. “We’re seeing more and more people here, catching the wave of optimism and developing a ‘yes we can’ attitude.”
A combination of factors have come together in recent years to provide the spark to downtown redevelopment, including an improving Southern Maine economy, affordable commercial rents, the shutdown of the trash plant, and an influx of newcomers attracted by a walkable neighborhood with new coffee shops, boutiques, and other stores.
Another key ingredient: the vision of developers like Doug Sanford, who saw the potential of both the mills and a city with a major hospital, Southern Maine Medical Center, a well-regarded university, the University of New England; and easy access to beaches.
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Biddeford is a city of 21,000 residents, located about 90 miles north of Boston. It became a textile center in the mid-1800s, when a group Boston industrialists were drawn to the power of the Saco River. At its peak in the early 20th century, more than 10,000 people worked in the mills in Biddeford, and Saco, across the river.
The mills began closing in 1960s, followed by the downtown businesses that had supported them and their workers. At the same time, retail development was moving from central business districts to strip malls, shopping centers, and big boxes on the periphery.
By the 1980s, both foreclosures and empty store fronts were multiplying. Desperate for investment and tax revenues, and with few options, the city in 1987 sited the trash-to-energy incinerator. But that only made things worse.
Garbage trucks queued up along downtown streets. The smell of rotting trash was in the air. Ash showered downtown businesses.
Through it all, Sanford kept buying and rehabbing individual downtown properties, convinced that people and businesses would one day return.
The city’s textile industry has even had a small rebirth in Sanford’s mills.
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Despite progress, the revitalization of downtown Biddeford faces challenges. Nearly half the mill space remains vacant. Merchants still face competition from suburban malls and big box stores. Tourists still bypass Biddeford for the bustling Old Port and lively restaurant scene in Portland, just 15 minutes away....
Please, no bad news or reality today that questions the saviors of our region.
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That's them!
Also see:
Verso Mill Jobs Vanish
Maine Calais
