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Rockland Reborn
Rockland’s Main Street is the type of downtown that has become an American icon. Clean red brick buildings with granite trim, passerbys who say hello and salt air from a harbor a stone’s throw from downtown.
by Susan Mustapich
Block after block of storefront windows display interesting and useful wares: greeting cards, stationary, books, well-made housewares and household appliances, unique gifts, women and men’s clothing, handmade crafts, Wyeth prints and original art. A café meeting-place serves coffee roasted fresh in town. Traditional Maine seafood restaurants coexist with Southwestern, Mediterranean, American Regional and International-eclectic cuisines.
Downtown construction and renovations confirm the vitality of Rockland’s commercial sector. Camden National Bank recently completed an expansion, The First Bank of Damariscotta has opened a new branch near the entrance to town and MBNA has transformed a piece of industrial waterfront into a $12 million call-center complex, complete with boathouse, pier, new sidewalks, repaved roads, improveme
nts to nearby buildings purchased by the company, extensive landscaping and a walkway on the harbor that is open to the public. Rockland had not seen a project of this scale and one that significantly enhanced the visual appeal of the city for many years.
Rockland had a prosperous past as a center of shipbuilding, quarrying, lime production and commercial fishing, but more recently has seen less glamorous decades. In the early 1980s, the town was dominated by a fish waste processing plant and had a rough and tumble reputation. Nearby Boothbay Harbor to the south, and Rockport and Camden to the north cultivated their coastlines and attracted tourists, while Rockland made the list of places to avoid. Rockland’s citizens, who have always had a strong sense of community pride, had to shoulder the slur, “Camden by the sea, Rockland by the smell.”
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Rockland began a slow turnaround that centered around several factors. A grassroots movement of community residents rallied to close SeaPro, a fish waste processing plant, near the historic North End Shipyard. Former City Council Member and three-time mayor Robert Peabody recalls that the North End of town was nearly unlivable when the wind blew from the east. Rockland had always been an industrial center, and many simply accepted the smell as the price of doing business. But Peabody discovered the plant employed only 15 people when running full-bore and decided that the cost of the plant, in terms of depressing the city’s desirability, was much greater than the benefit. He waged a citizen’s campaign over a number of years, which culminated in a public referendum that closed the plant down.
The next chapter in Rockland’s revival revolved around the growth of the Farnsworth Museum. In the early 1990s, the quiet and almost academic institution, tucked between Museum and Elm streets, decided to create a Main Street presence with a bookstore and gift shop. This small move signaled a sea change behind the scenes, which actually started with the hiring of Museum Director Christopher Crosman in 1988. Over the past decade, Crosman has stewarded several major expansions of the Farnsworth and turned it into one of the best small museums in the country. The economic benefits from the museum extend directly from the million or so visitors who travel annually to Rockland to see the significant collection of three-generations of Wyeth paintings, American paintings and traveling shows of contemporary art.
While Rockland was home to several art galleries prior to the Farnsworth expansion, the museum has boosted gallery growth along Main Street. Artist Jim Kineally opened the Caldbeck Gallery on Elm Street in 1982, after renovating a building formerly occupied by the girlfriends of a local motorcycle gang. The Elm Street of today, with its row of galleries facing the Farnsworth Museum and garden, bears little resemblance to the neighborhood back then, where street brawls were not uncommon.
When Kineally first opened the Caldbeck it was hard for artists to find gathering places, so he created the gallery as a way to strengthen the art community. Together with his wife Cynthia Hyde, Kineally has seen the gallery fulfill that vision and at the same time grow into a profitable business. Gallery 407 operates along a similar philosophy, providing studio and presentation space for local artists. Galleries including Harbor Square, situated on Museum and Main Street, Elements and Gallery at 357 Main have cultivated a following of customers interested in contemporary art. Huston-Tuttle’s Gallery One, Lyn Snow Watercolors, Art of the Sea and Sparrow Framing are also popular with shoppers, as are Light Impressions and the newly opened Mariner’s Gallery of the Atlantic Challenge Foundation.
Local entrepreneurs who took notice of the “Farnsworth” effect opened Main Street shops, bolstering a third element of Rockland’s revival.
Patrick Reilley and Susanne Ward, expanded cafe/used book store Second Read when they moved across the street into the newly renovated Syndicate Block, a three-story red brick building with offices and apartments on the second and third floors. More recently, the duo opened Rock City Roasters, a gourmet coffee roasting establishment on lower Main Street.
Other business that have sparked interest in the area include Café Miranda, The Wine Seller, Black Parrot, Grasshopper and Caravans clothing stores, G.F. MacGregor’s, G.M. Pollack jewelers, Amalfi’s restaurant and most recently, Sanctuary Day Spa. The renovation of the former Coffin’s department store into the Island Institute’s headquarters brought Archipelago, a gift shop showcasing handmade crafts from Maine’s islands. New businesses were lent a helping hand and money, under the city’s former economic development director Dake Collins. And throughout, By George jewelers, Maces clothing store, Puffin Shop, Rockland Café, Reading Corner, barbers, hair cutting businesses and eye glass stores have been the stalwarts.
Reilley is concerned that future growth occur, without diminishing the elements that make Rockland unique. He believes that the decades of neglect the city experienced are inadvertently responsible for the preservation of its handsome Main Street buildings. As an example of the backwards march of progress, he cites the demolition of the city’s old U.S. Customs and Post Office Building, erected in the 1870s. Perhaps the grandest structure in the city, the two and a-half story building with thick granite block walls, narrow windows recessed in curved archways, Italianate detail, eight chimneys and a slate mansard roof, was abandoned in 1967. In its place was built a standard government issue, one-story, flat roof brick building and a big parking lot.
Other cities have seen more of this than Rockland, where newer buildings and stores, built outside of the downtown area, have drawn the life of a town away from its center.
A most recent development, the multi-million dollar improvement to the city’s waste treatment plant, has solidified Rockland’s upswing. After a few tough years trying to salvage the malfunctioning plant, the town’s citizens bit the bullet and voted for an expensive, but necessary, renovation. Now economic growth is courting the city, creating controversy about its future direction. A proposed “Super-WalMart” drew criticism from a large group of citizens and solid support from others, while a marina planned by the Samoset Resort for Rockland’s Breakwater went down in defeat. The nearly certain development of a Home Depot is shaking the foundations of the city’s smaller hardware stores, while others see the store as another step toward creating jobs and increasing the city’s tax base.
For a town that has faced tough choices and tough times, the abundance of opportunities, despite potential pitfalls, are perhaps a welcome dilemma.