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8 Friday, January 15, 2010, Bangor Daily News Bangor Daily News, Friday, January 15, 2010 1

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2
7
3

Kenduskeag
Stream

Penobscot
River

BY TOM McCORD
GRAPHICS AND DESIGN BY ERIC ZELZ

1 5

Kenduskeag
Stream
3
7

See Pages
4 and 5
for a view
from this
spot.

Penobscot
River

Changing Bangor 1.
2.
1960: CITY HALL 2010: COLUMBIA STREET PARKING DECK
PICKERING SQUARE
Bangor in 1960 was a much different place from what it is today. Wholesale and retail activity was 3. 1960: FLAT IRON BUILDING 2010: NORTH CORNER, PICKERING SQUARE
4. GRAHAM BUILDING
concentrated in the downtown area. An Air Force base employed thousands. There were no malls. 5. 1960: U.S. POST OFFICE 2010: BANGOR CITY HALL
Traffic, buildings and warehouses lining the Kenduskeag Stream bordered a much wider expanse of 6. 1960: BIJOU THEATER 2010: BANK OF AMERICA
7. 1960: PENOBSCOT EXCHANGE HOTEL 2010: MALISEET GARDENS
water running through the city. And historic preservation districts were years away. 8. 1960: UNION STATION 2010: PENOBSCOT PLAZA

AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY OF DOWNTOWN BANGOR BY BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTOGRAPHERS KEVIN BENNETT, SEPT. 4, 2009, AND SPIKE WEBB, JUNE 1960 BANGOR DAILY NEWS GRAPHIC BY ERIC ZELZ
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2 Friday, January 15, 2010, Bangor Daily News

For the complete series, visit

On The Threshold: The Story of Bangor’s Urban


Renewal
A four-part series examining how Bangor has changed
since voting to create an Urban Renewal Authority
This installment title here
Visit bangordailynews.com for the complete series
Part 1: Celebration overshadows changes
Part 2: The 1960s Kenduskeag Stream project aimed for
a renaissance in the city’s downtown
Part 3: Downtown demolition in 1960s and ‘70s left
plenty of potential and trauma

Part 1
Bunyan and Bonfires
In 1959, the city celebrated its 125th birthday, BANGOR DAILY NEWS FILE PHOTO BY CARROLL HALL
but a wrenching transition lay ahead. The demolition of Morse's Mill, Bangor’s sole surviving sawmill from the great 19th century lumbering era, begins in May
1975 despite a last-minute effort to preserve the structure. The building made room for a parking lot.

Part 4

A Remedy
for Renewal
Bangor slowly rediscovers the value of its past, but it
Part 2 takes some plucky people and a new ordinance to help
A Vote to Be Modern
The 1960s Kenduskeag Stream
project aimed for a renaissance BY TOM MCCORD
in the city’s downtown. OF THE NEWS STAFF

Christina Baker remembers bundling her 3-year-old daughter into the car on the morning of
May 23, 1975, and rushing down to Valley Avenue in Bangor, ready to stop a bulldozer.
Two years earlier, she and her husband, Bill, had stood by, watching the demolition of Bangor’s Bijou
Theater as part of the city’s nearly 10-year-old urban renewal program. They collected a few bricks that day
and went home.
Baker couldn’t forget it.
In 1975, when she read of plans to demolish the city’s last remaining sawmill, a ramshackle red-brick
building along Kenduskeag Stream, Baker decided to launch a petition drive to keep Morse’s Mill from
becoming another wrecking ball Bijou.
She walked around her Bangor neighborhood and outside stores, collecting signatures. Then she started
hearing from people, including some socially prominent women in Bangor.
“These people began to call and say, basically, ‘We’ve been waiting for someone to speak out,’” Baker
recalled. While Morse’s Mill was not, properly speaking, part of the federally supported urban renewal
program, it was a highly visible connection to the city’s lumbering past — a connection that urban renewal
seemed to be eliminating.
“The day came that the bulldozer was down at the site,” said Baker, who is retired and lives in
Bass Harbor. “And $500 was needed to stop the
ball-and-crane. And I put out a call and people
were at my door with hundred-dollar bills.”
Baker parked across the street from the mill, then
Part 3 ran over, “waving my bills.” But a corner of the
Out With The Old building was already gone.
Downtown demolition in the
1960s and ’70s left plenty of Morse’s Mill was demolished and a parking lot
potential, and trauma. put in its place. It’s still there.
But Baker’s petition drive and a series of steps
shortly afterward became a serendipitous moment
in Bangor’s long effort to cross the threshold into
something new, something modern. By 1977, the
city had taken its first big steps toward including
preservation, not just demolition, as an option for
urban renewal.
“Bangor actually passed what I consider to be the
first comprehensive municipal historic ordinance
in the state,” said Earle G. Shettleworth Jr., state his-
Part 4
A Remedy for Renewal torian since 2004. “That’s not to say that some other
By the 1970s, tax breaks and a shift toward communities had not adopted local historic preser-
preservation rekindle interest in downtown.
vation ordinances. But the Bangor ordinance was
and still is one of the finest, most well-crafted, most
This Bangor Daily News Special Section is sponsored in part by well-structured ordinances to protect historic areas
and individual buildings in a municipality in
Maine.”
The preservation ordinance was a reaction to
about 20 years of steps taken to eradicate poor
housing and commercial deterioration in Bangor, a
city of 30,000 whose existence had been closely
linked to its location at head of tide on the Penob-
scot River at Kenduskeag Stream. Complicating
matters was the explosive growth of Dow Air Force
Base in the early 1950s — and its closure by 1968. BANGOR DAILY NEWS FILE PHOTOS BY SPIKE WEBB AND JACK LOFTUS
For the first time in more than 70 years, daylight streamed
In effect, the city’s leaders attempted a triple play: through a cavernous opening in the roof of the Bijou Theater. After
upgrade housing, revive the downtown commer- decades of tap dancing, vaudeville and drama, giving way to
cial district, and reshape a 2,000-acre air base for Chaplin and Pickford on a screen, the Bijou fell to demolition crews
to make way for what is now the Bank of America Building on
civilian uses. It wasn’t easy. Exchange Street.
Continued on Page 6
Located in the historic Graham Building in downtown Bangor
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Bangor Daily News, Friday, January 15, 2010, 3

BANGOR, 1960

Mapping Urban Renewal


Bangor’s urban renewal involved a variety of projects, affecting large parts of the city over many
years. From the creation of the Bangor Urban Renewal Authority in 1958 to the completion of
the final building on renewal land, the Penobscot Judicial Center, in 2009, the city has altered much
within its boundaries, just as its residents’ notions of what is worthy of preservation and what is
7 not has evolved. Referred to by some detractors as “urban removal,” Bangor’s massive renewal proj-
14 15 ect eventually helped contribute to a stronger sense of who we are and what we want to become.
3

16 17

14
MORE DOWNTOWN PARKING
1 KENDUSKEAG STREAM By the early 1960s, the Kenduskeag
URBAN RENEWAL PROJECT
Designed to eliminate deteriorated properties Stream had been narrowed consider-
and mixtures of retail and wholesale uses as ably with construction of the
well as provide space for anticipated commer- Kenduskeag Stream Plaza.
cial growth it also led to the demolition of 150
downtown buildings and the creation of acres 13 A MISSING NEIGHBORHOOD
of empy space in the city’s center. Before 1969, an entire neighborhood
2 STILLWATER PARK existed where Hayford Park and Pancoe
In 1962 the Bangor Urban Renewal Authority Pool are now. The 37 buildings of
9 Fairmount Terrace were homes to Air
launched its first big project, the “renewal” of the
132-acre Stillwater Park neighborhood between Force personnel stationed at Dow.
Mount Hope and Stillwater avenues. It bought or 4
condemned 218 properties and relocated 69 12 BANGOR INTERNATIONAL
families. Old streets disappeared while new ones
5
2 AIRPORT
were laid, and a new house lot on Howard Street, 11 When Dow Air Force Base closed in
along Stillwater Park cost $2,000. 1968, ownership of the 2,000-acre
site was transferred to the city for $1.
2 Bangor International Airport opened
in July 1968.
8
12 11 AIRPORT MALL
BANGOR, 2010 An early shopping center on Union Street.

13 1/2 mile 10 I-395


Originally called the Industrial Spur, the
highway connected an unfinished
Interstate 95 with downtown Bangor.
1
9 BANGOR HIGH SCHOOL
In 1965, a new Bangor High School was
built off Broadway, leaving its downtown
Harlow Street location.
10

5 BROADWAY SHOPPING CENTER


Bangor’s first shopping center was also the annual touch-
down spot for a helicopter-flying Santa Claus in the 1960s.
2

3 6 7
PENOBSCOT EXCHANGE HOTEL UNION STATION CITY HALL
Located where Maliseet Gardens is today, this hotel Built in 1907, the beloved train station came down in 1961 Until 1969, it stood on the corner of
was demolished in the early 1960s. after passenger rail service was discontinued. It stood on Hammond and Columbia streets and
the site of today’s Penobscot Plaza, Washington Street. housed the Urban Renewal Authority.
BANGOR MALL,
STILLWATER AVENUE 4 4
AND HOGAN ROAD
DEVELOPMENT
The opening of Bangor’s
largest mall on a former
60-acre dairy farm in 8
1978 immediately attracted
thousands of shoppers and HANCOCK-YORK NEIGHBORHOOD
further eroded a struggling A plan covering 194 structures, with 85
downtown. percent not meeting minimum code
requirements, the Hancock-York area
(now home, in part, to The Terraces
apartments) was the first in a series of
neighborhhood rehabilitation projects.

Then and now


To fully appreciate changes to Bangor and UBS Financial Services building. At Building to the left. Cross Kenduskeag to Maliseet Gardens and visit the Hancock Street, behind St. John Catholic
over the past 50 years, walk through the the main bus stop in Pickering Square, Stream, so much wider 50 years ago, and Penobscot Exchange Hotel, where in the Church and imagine families home for the
downtown neighborhoods and imagine. envision the outbound buses not simply approach the Bank of America building, lounge you might overhear local archi- day, the sounds of cooking and conversa-
See the old buildings on Broad Street bor- rounding the northern end of the pedes- where on so many afternoons and tects and builders discussing the latest tion drifting from the dense neighborhood
dering Pickering Sqaure, following the trian park there but instead rumbling by evenings moviegoers would line up for the design for a new Bangor Auditorium, one there. It’s all there and more.
footprint of today’s city parking garage the rounded facade of the old Flat Iron latest feature at the Bijou. Cross the street with a wing-shaped roof. Finally, stroll up Just imagine.

15 17
Right, Left,
EXCHANGE BROAD
STREET STREET
1957 and 1964 anf
2009 2010

16
Center,
LOOKING
TOWARD
PICKERING
SQUARE
1960 and
2010
15 16 17

SOURCES: Bangor Daily News file photos; photo illustration by Bangor Daily News graphics editor Eric Zelz; aerial photography by Bangor Daily News photographer Kevin Bennett; Mark Woodward, consultant; BANGOR DAILY NEWS GRAPHIC BY ERIC ZELZ
Peter Witham, City of Bangor Planning Division; MEGIS; Bangor Public Library; “Woodsmen and Whigs, Historic Images of Bangor, Maine” by Abigail Ewing Zelz, Marilyn Zoidis; “Bangor, Maine, An Illustrated History”;
Cole Land Transportation Museum; “Downtown Bangor Tomorrow, A Preliminary Plan for the Kenduskeag Stream Urban Renewal Project”; “Beautiful Homesites In Stillwater Park, Bangor’s First Urban Renewal Development”
4 Bangor Daily News, Friday, January 15, 2010 5

Kenduskeag Buildings in these panoramic composites may appear different from how they actually were or are today due to the photographers’ relative position and camera angle.
Stream,
east side
BIJOU THEATER
164 Exchange Street UNION STATION
Washington Street

BANGOR SAVINGS BANK


3 State Street

Kenduskeag
Stream,
east side BANK OF AMERICA
BUILDING
80 Exchange Street

PENOBSCOT JUDICIAL CENTER


79 Exchange Street

See detail York Street


below

Kenduskeag
Stream,
west side

CITY HALL
Corner of Hammond
and Columbia streets

Kenduskeag
Stream,
west side UBS FINANCIAL
SERVICES BUILDING
1 Merchants Plaza

Before and After Urban Renewal


If you walked along the Kenduskeag Stream in downtown Bangor in 1960, what would you see compared with today?
When Bangor voters approved the creation and modern city. Kenduskeag Stream was narrowed from 250
of an Urban Renewal Authority in 1958, city The Bangor Urban Renewal Authority’s abil- feet to 80 feet between Exchange and Broad
planners, residents and businesspeople had ity to buy and sell properties by using millions streets to add more parking downtown. And
great plans to tackle what urban planners of of dollars of federal aid brought rapid results. in 1964, Bangor voted 4,044 to 3,568 in favor
The docklike posts and
the day considered “blight.” Bangor’s substan- The plans were big and would affect all parts of the Kenduskeag Stream Urban Renewal
chains near the Bangor dard housing, congestion, and mix of living, of the city, but perhaps the most visible and Project, a massive, city- and federally-funded
Savings Bank driveup retailing and wholesaling would be a thing of controversial were those for the downtown. program that would eventually demolish
A VIEW FROM THE entrance once served
OTHER SIDE more than a decorative the past. The urban renewal taking place in so By September 1960, change was in the air. about 150 buildings in the city’s downtown
The buildings along the purpose. They actually many other communities would now visit The end of passenger rail service to Bangor core. Once demolition began, Exchange Street
Kenduskeag Stream as marked the edge of the
seen from Exchange Kenduskeag Stream. Bangor, and with it, residents were promised, led to the sale and eventual demolition of and Broad Street and the stream that ran
Street (far left) and would come a return to greatness in a fresh Union Station in 1961. In 1962, the between them were dramatically reshaped.
Broad Street.

SOURCES: Bangor Daily News file photos; photo illustration by Bangor Daily News graphics editor Eric Zelz; aerial photography by Bangor Daily News photographer Kevin Bennett; Mark Woodward, consultant; BANGOR DAILY NEWS GRAPHIC BY ERIC ZELZ
Peter Witham, City of Bangor Planning Division; MEGIS; Bangor Public Library; “Woodsmen and Whigs, Historic Images of Bangor, Maine” by Abigail Ewing Zelz, Marilyn Zoidis; “Bangor, Maine, An Illustrated History”;
Cole Land Transportation Museum; “Downtown Bangor Tomorrow, A Preliminary Plan for the Kenduskeag Stream Urban Renewal Project”; “Beautiful Homesites In Stillwater Park, Bangor’s First Urban Renewal Development”
Page 6 1st edition Cyan Magenta Yellow Black

6 Friday, January 15, 2010, Bangor Daily News

The granite front


portion of the Flat
Iron Block on
Exchange Street
housed a bank and
and a stove foundry
after its opening in
the 1830s. Promi-
nent architect
Charles G. Bryant
designed the block,
which boasted a
clock and Bryant's
trademark orna-
mental wreaths
carved into the
tower. The landmark
was razed as part of
the city’s urban
renewal program.

From Page 2
he city’s first compre-

T hensive plan, called the


Master Plan of 1951, had
condemned Bangor’s
“crazy quilt” pattern of houses,
stores, junkyards, warehouses
and apartment buildings.
In 1958, city voters agreed to
create the Bangor Urban Renew-
al Authority, which could buy
and sell properties and funnel
millions of federal aid dollars.
The authority narrowed
Kenduskeag Stream downtown
to add more parking spaces, and
in 1962, after another referen-
dum, it launched its first big
project: “renewal” of the 132- BANGOR DAILY NEWS FILE PHOTO
acre Stillwater Park neighbor- By 1962, the city reported that some homes in the Stillwater Park
hood between Mount Hope and neighborhood had fallen into disrepair. A sales brochure (top) was
Stillwater avenues. There, it designed to attract new homeowners.
bought or took by condemna-
tion 218 parcels and relocated 69 plans to close urban renewal project of the
families and four businesses. Dow. A city 1960s: downtown. By 1964, the
Among the displaced was Jay study conclud- authority and its planners were
O’Loughlin, who ran a green- ed that Bangor arguing that a gross budget of
house and flower business on could own and $8.3 million would cover a five-
Mount Hope Avenue. His daugh- run a civilian year urban renewal program
ter, Jane O’Loughlin French, airport at the for 52 acres, including demoli-
said her late father hired a former base if tion of more than 100 buildings,
lawyer to fight it. “It caused him the federal gov- construction of parking and
a lot of stress,” she said. ernment main- Baker resale of cleared land. The logic
“Someone somewhere decid- tained the run- was to clear the way for new
ed that, well, these people can ways and lighting system. The buildings that would raise the
get moved,” French recalled. “I Air National Guard maintained property valuations and draw
don’t know as they ever bought its presence at the airport, and shoppers away from the emerg-
any better place to live in. ... It that helped prod the Federal Avi- ing strip shopping centers on
was just. ‘Let’s clear-cut. Resell ation Administration to keep the Broadway and across the river
it. And now it will be a better control tower open 24 hours a in Brewer.
tax base.” day. Bangor International Air- The new downtown would be
Construction of the first port opened July 1, 1968. oriented toward people, “a place
urban renewal home in Stillwa- In an almost comical last- of stores and shops, offices,
ter Park began in 1966, and minute break, a federal official restaurants, hotels, a conven-
French’s family managed to called then-City Manager Merle tion center, banks, parking lots
hold on to an acre. But the pain Goff to ask whether the city had and parks, aesthetics and land-
remains. an economic development proj- scaping,” according to a promo-
An Urban Renewal Authority ect in the $1 million range that tional brochure from 1964. Vot-
publication in 1968, summariz- was near the final planning ers approved the plan that year
ing 10 years of work, pointed stage. “Stretching the truth con- 4,044 to 3,568, and a series of
out a paradox in housing renew- siderably,” Goff recalled years condemnations and demolitions
al: Remaking neighborhoods on later, he spoke confidently to the occurred into the early 1970s.
a large scale was inhibited by official about the city’s plans for Among the downtown build-
“the lack of sufficient available its airport terminal. Then he ings torn down: City Hall, dat-
standard housing in which to learned that the proposal needed ing from the 1890s; the Flat Iron
move great numbers of fami- to be submitted in four days. Building, dating from the 1830s;
lies.” “The staff worked on the applica- the Penobscot Exchange Hotel,
tion the entire weekend in the old with portions dating from the
art of the city’s concern City Hall,” Goff told the Bangor 1820s; and the Bijou, rebuilt

P about housing stemmed


from the Air Force’s deci-
sion in the 1950s to ratch-
et up its Dow Air Force Base in
Bangor into a Strategic Air
Daily News in 1998. The city won
the grant. And in 1972 the city
dedicated its new passenger ter-
minal.
Other portions of the air base
after the Great Fire of 1911.
Complicating the planners’
hopes was the shift, in Bangor
as well as in the rest of the
nation, of retail from down-
Command installation. — and 14 buildings — were towns to outlying areas.
By the early 1960s, 4,500 Air turned over to the University of The opening of Bangor Mall
Force personnel — along with Maine, which wanted 2,000 stu- on a 60-acre former dairy farm
8,100 dependents and 462 civil- dents on a branch campus in in October 1978 drew thousands
ians — were connected to Dow. 1968. And 118 buildings were ear- of people. “The mall was a real
At one point, 1,500 of the city’s marked for use in commercial ‘wow’ thing for the area,”
7,500 public school pupils were development. On Oct. 30, 1968, recalled its first director, Roy
Air Force kids. General Electric Co. announced Daigle, in a 1997 interview.
Then the Department of plans to locate on 9 acres and “From the time it broke ground
Defense announced in 1964 that employ 130 workers in steam tur- in 1977, it was being hailed as
it would close the base by 1968, bine projects. the Second Coming or some- PHOTOS FROM “BANGOR, MAINE, AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY”
spurring the city to launch a Dow became a model for U.S. thing.” By the 1960s, the ornamentation of the Flat Iron Building (second photo
distinctive kind of urban military base closures. When city government from top) was gone, as soon would be the entire building. Also slated for
renewal: reuse of a Cold War air looked at the Bangor market in demolition were structures on Pickering Square (third photo from top) and
base. he Stillwater Park hous- 1980, it reported that downtown

T
Broad Street (above), some dating from the 1830s.
From 1965 on, a city staff ing project was, in a urban renewal led to 230,000
member coordinated Bangor’s sense, the kickoff to square feet of new bank and
response to the Air Force’s Bangor’s third major Continued on next page

“Someone somewhere decided that, well, these people can get moved. I don’t know as they ever bought any
better place to live in. ... It was just, ‘Let’s clear-cut. Resell it. And now it will be a better tax base.’”
JANE O’LOUGHLIN FRENCH
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Bangor Daily News, Friday, January 15, 2010, 7

By March 1975, just two newly


built bank buildings (left) were
among a handful of structures
standing in the Kenduskeag
Stream urban renewal project.
At far left was the new Mer-
chants National Bank. To the
far right was the new Deposi-
tor’s Trust building. The photo
below (left) dates from 1963.
The highlighted building, at the
corner of York and Exchange
streets, is visible in both pho-
tos. “There were a lot of prom-
ises made,” said Gene W. Sing,
who grew up in downtown Ban-
gor. “Then they tore everything
down and it became desolate.”

A Bangor residential neighbor-


hood (below) built in the early
1940s, Fairmount Terrace off
Union Street ("G.I. Village")
was demolished in 1969,
removing 37 buildings from 23
acres and making way for what
is now Hayford Park.

BANGOR DAILY NEWS FILE PHOTOS


BY DANNY MAHER

office space, 20,500 square feet of “It did have, I think, a very Master Plan as a prime candi- “When we started, there was- town — has enlivened the place.
restaurants, and 65,000 square important effect on both private date for revival. About eight n’t much going on,” Bob Kelly “Downtown Bangor has bene-
feet of retail and service space, citizens and elected officials in blocks long and two blocks wide, said. “But the groundwork had fited from a remarkable resur-
totaling $16 million in value. the community in convincing the Hancock-York redevelop- been laid because there was a gence and renaissance — even
On the other hand, 1.8 million people that, yes, Bangor had had ment plan covered 194 struc- historic preservation ordinance in the past five years,” said an
square feet of shopping centers a 1911 fire which had destroyed tures — with 85 percent not in place and a lot of the build- admittedly biased Rep. Steven
were built in the area between significant buildings in the meeting “minimum housing, ings we renovated downtown Butterfield, D-Bangor, who lives
1962 and 1978. downtown and, yes, Bangor had building, electrical and plumb- were in existing historic dis- “in a beautifully and carefully
engaged in urban renewal and ing code standards,” according tricts. And that made it a lot eas- restored apartment in a restored
here had been this another large body of historic to a city report. ier for us to use the tax credits to building” downtown, as he

T groundswell of inarticu-
late misery every time
something came down,”
recalled architectural historian
Deborah Thompson, who has
buildings were lost,” Shettle-
worth said. “But … there was
still so much left. And there
needed to be a local strategy to
preserve those remaining
The city took years to arrange
the project with a developer, but
Hancock-York was just the first
of a series: the Curve Street
neighborhood (1979); the east
attract investors.”
Kelly, 62, said many of his
investors are people who live in
the Bangor area. “A lot of them
are motivated by a desire to save
described it. “It’s the perfect
combination of small-town feel
and big-city lifestyle.”
Another factor was the cre-
ation in 1987 of what at first was
documented Bangor’s historical resources.” side neighborhood (1980); the the old buildings as much as called Bangor Center Manage-
buildings. The city historic preservation Center Street neighborhood anything,” he said. ment Corp., now known simply
After Thompson’s neighbor ordinance set up a panel, the (1983); the Garland-State streets as Bangor Center Corp. An
Christina Baker had tried to Bangor Historic Preservation neighborhood (1984); the west eyond preservation of assessment on property owners
stop the demolition of Morse’s
Mill in 1975, Thompson told
Baker, “You can’t stop now,”
Baker recalled.
So Baker, Thompson and a
Commission, which identifies
historic districts, landmarks
and sites.
Shettleworth said Bangor’s
ordinance has teeth and is care-
side neighborhood (1982), and
more. A 2007 summary of the
Community Development Block
Grant program in Bangor count-
ed $40 million filtered to the city
B buildings, downtown
Bangor suffered in the
1980s and into the 1990s
from on-again, off-again ques-
tions about its purpose, focus
in the downtown district pro-
vides some funding, and the city
kicks in staff help.
Its president, Brian Ames, of
Ames A/E, an architecture-engi-
handful of others mapped a fully crafted to follow “one of for such projects since 1975. and viability. Despite a series of neering firm, said Bangor Cen-
strategy to take stock of what the best national standards,” consultants’ reports, the core, as ter is working these days on
Bangor still had — and how to known as the secretary of the hettleworth said the feder- planners like to call it, was buf- marketing and promoting of
preserve it.
“We sat around my round oak
table in the dining room and
plotted out a three-day work-
shop, where we would bring in
interior’s standards for rehabili-
tation. He also cited effective
local leadership as another fac-
tor in the city’s success with the
ordinance.
S al government started giv-
ing more favorable treat-
ment to rehabilitation of
older properties — instead of
demolition — around the period
feted by conflicting ideas.
Should downtown try to be like
Freeport, Portland or none of
the above?
“There was a sense that eco-
long-term programs rather than
one-time events to draw people
downtown.
“It’s much more directed, tar-
geted than it has been,” Ames
experts from the region to speak In the 30 years since its cre- of the nation’s bicentennial, nomic development was going to said. In addition to efforts
to three different groups, the cit- ation, the commission has been 1976. And a federal tax credit come up from the south,” said focused on signage and aesthet-
izens, the businesspeople and instrumental in designating gave extra incentive to rehabili- Kathryn A. Hunt, of Starboard ics, the center wants programs
the City Council,” Baker said. nine historic districts in the city. tation. Maine began offering its Leadership Consulting LLC, a that keep people coming back to
“The meetings were filled to own tax break in 1991. Bangor-based firm that provides downtown Bangor — for con-
overflowing.” eanwhile, federal “It’s a federal urban strategy strategic planning and leader- certs, an outdoor market, even
The Maine Historic Preserva-
tion Commission had just been
established, and Shettleworth,
then a 27-year-old architectural
historian, was a staff member
M rules were changing.
Urban renewal by the
1970s had become
dirty words, and the top-down
style of controlling projects
that is the direct opposite of
urban renewal,” Shettleworth
said. “Number one, urban
renewal gives you money from
above and tells you to destroy
ship development. “But we’re
not very proximate to Boston.”
Hunt said it’s possible for a
community the size of Bangor
to define its purpose by showing
holiday Santa workshops.
It’s a shift that Christina
Baker has noted, 35 years after
her petition drive to save
Morse’s Mill.
when the Baker-Thompson paid for primarily with federal and rebuild. The tax credit says, some imagination and courage. “We still lament the buildings
group got in touch. dollars was under fire. In 1974, ‘I’m offering the private sector, She recalled the naysaying she that are gone,” Baker said. But
First order of business was a Congress passed the Housing the private investor, the private heard before Bangor began host- she pointed out “that amazing
survey of the city. and Community Development entrepreneur, a benefit if he or ing the National (now Ameri- photograph in the Bangor Daily
“And so for the entire summer Act, which focused on use of she will properly rehabilitate a can) Folk Festival in 2002. News last week of 2,000 people
of 1975, I spent a good deal of block grants that have since historic building.’” Still, she said, “There’s a pre- downtown, celebrating New
my time up in Bangor, creating a become the standard form of Enter Bob Kelly. cariousness to Bangor. It’s hold- Year’s Eve.” Her husband told
series of inventories of historic federal aid for housing and In the early 1980s, Kelly shift- ing on, but not necessarily gain- her it looked like a Norman
neighborhoods, house by house, renewal projects. ed from work with hydropower ing.” Rockwell painting.
street by street, to document That led Bangor to a new era (and serving as a Penobscot In recent years, a series of “The fabric of the downtown
these buildings, to identify of projects, still relying heavily County commissioner) to reha- changes — including renovation is there,” Baker said. “And it’s a
where the most significant on federal dollars but allowing bilitation of old buildings. He of the Penobscot Theatre on thrill to know that we have this
groupings of buildings were,” more local control. and his wife, Suzanne, are own- Main Street, the opening of a now.”
Shettleworth said. It became Bangor took aim at its Han- ers of House Revivers and have range of eateries and watering tmccord@bangordailynews.net
known as the Bangor Historic cock-York streets neighborhood, been recognized for their work holes, and an increase in the 990-0124
Resources Inventory. identified as far back as the 1951 by preservationist groups. number of people living down-

“Urban renewal gives you money from above and tells you to destroy and rebuild. The tax credit
says, ‘I’m offering the private sector, the private investor, the private entrepreneur, a benefit if he or
she will properly rehabilitate a historic building.’”
EARLE G. SHETTLEWORTH, STATE HISTORIAN

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