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Looking Forward: What the future holds for Maine
Looking Forward
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WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR MAINE
Written by Doug Bailey | Photos courtesy Waterstone Properties
EVERYONE NEEDS A personal theme song and, for now, Josh Levy’s might be the Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper tune “Fixing a Hole.” What was once a desolate, contaminated, abandoned quarry just off Interstate 95 in Westbrook — complete with a 400-ft.-wide, 300-ft.-wide hole in the ground — is being transformed under Levy’s guidance to what may already be the single largest commercial development in Maine’s history, encompassing retail stores, residences, technology and medical research, office space, entertainment, hotel, and convention halls, even nature walks, rock climbing, and bicycle trails.
In short, the 110-acre $600 million site, dubbed Rock Row, aims to be home to the state’s first true Innovation District, showcasing a hub of excellence that will catalyze new investment, jobs, science, tourism, and economic development for the entire state. The idea is to make Rock Row a linchpin of Maine’s overall long-term strategy to spur new investment in infrastructure, education, talent, recruitment, and innovation.
“This is a really forward-looking project,” says Levy, the co-founder of Waterstone Properties Group, one of the largest commercial developers in New England. “We want to create something we can all be proud of in a way that respects the character of the area and makes it feel like it was always part of the fabric, but also helps take the state to the next economic development level.”
Already the site has lured popular regional grocery chain Market Basket, which opened last year, an 8,200-seat Live Nation outdoor amphitheater, and, most recently, a six-acre medical and research campus anchored by New England Cancer Specialists, a member of the world-renowned Dana-Farber Cancer Care Collaborative.
And Levy is just getting started.
“Rock Row is going to be a huge economic engine,” he says. “It will mean 4,000 jobs just on our site, with a halo impact of 10,000 to 15,000 jobs in the area.”
A MAINE MOMENT
It could have been just another generic open-air mall. In fact, when Waterstone bought the property in 2017, the plans called for an anchor retail tenant— Walmart—ringed with typical national chain retailers. Levy and company had bigger ideas.
“The pandemic is actually creating a catalyst for Maine where remote workers are moving to the state from Boston, New York, and elsewhere,” said Oliver Olsson, director of Strategic Partnerships at Waterstone. “We see us supporting this moment for Maine and the recruitment of new talent and new companies and new opportunities.”
Indeed, new data confirms that the boom in remote working caused by the pandemic inspired many people to
move out of urban areas and large metro regions and into smaller metros, especially in New York and New England. Moreover, they generally moved to vacation destinations — Maine still calls itself “vacationland,” a motto that might be primed for a revision. More people moved out of Boston, for example, than moved in, according to data compiled by The New York Times. It’s not clear how many moved to Maine, and it’s not certain this relocation will continue once the pandemic subsides. Nevertheless, economists and urban planners feel the time is ripe to capitalize on the migration trends.
“Rock Row is a place where people will want to live, spend time, work, and connect,” Levy said.
More than a multi-use development, Levy imagines Rock Row as an “amazing destination” where people might spend entire days rock climbing at the quarry, shopping at the stores, grabbing a craft beer at one of the local breweries, dining out, attending a concert in the evenings, or watching a hockey tournament at the pond.
The journey from the conventional multi-use development to one that entailed a robust, immersive, innovative, community was a short one for Waterstone, but one that involved a lot more than traditional planning. Levy first began what he called a “research and discovery” expedition to successful innovative projects in other states that went beyond simply dropping a few big box retailers on some property and opening for business. Then he sought buy-in and input from a host of local and area business leaders, civic organizations, trade groups, and others, forming nearly 40 partnerships with organizations whose representatives for the last three years spent time at the future Rock Row site, considering all the possibilities of what could be.
“We really found out what people wanted and needed in the area,” says Levy. “And those two things are really what led to the birth of Rock Row. It’s not just us coming in and saying ‘hey, let’s do a mixed-use development.’ We’ve done that in other areas. But this called for a broader vision to meet needs.”
Last November, Waterstone hosted a strategic visioning session to help define Rock Row as an Innovation District for Maine. It gathered a who’s who of business and government leaders from the state and beyond. Participants included representatives from private capital and economic development firms like Black Point Group, FocusMaine, Maine Venture Fund, Maine & Company, Live and Work Maine, Maine Angels, government participants from the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development, the City of Westbrook, business groups and various think tanks and groups representing technology, medical, and development sectors.
“We are excited to see the ongoing work and developments at Rock Row,” said Heather Johnson, commissioner of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development. “This kind of public-private collaboration designed to attract innovation investment offers important economic growth opportunities for the state.”
The focus of the visioning session was to define what was needed to create a unique innovation district and ecosystem that was authentic to Maine. What they saw was an opportunity to design the district as an innovation catalyst
ATTENDEES OF VISIONING STRATEGY SESSION
DAVID SHAW | MARTHA BENTLEY TOBY AHRENS | JOHN BURNS JOSH CORBEAU | PETER DELGRECO SAM FRATONI | MATT HOFFNER KAREN HOUSEKNECHT TODD KEILLER | TOM RAINEY KATIE SHOREY | DANIEL STEVENSON DEBORAH STRUMSKY | LIZ TRICE RYAN WALLACE | AUSTIN WILLIAMS
and a recruitment asset that can have a lasting impact on the region and state to contribute mightily to the state’s overall economic development, particularly in these difficult times.
“The overriding issue right now is how do you get development back on track, get investment back on track, and get jobs back on track,” says Nicole Fichera, an economist and urban innovation expert with the Boston-based Hourglass Collaborative. “An innovation district is an initiative with levers to do all of those things and to recapture that value, hopefully in a way that supports more local businesses.”
Fichera, who managed Boston’s Innovation District initiative, notes that
there’s ongoing disruption taking place in the distribution of capital, labor, and development, mostly attributable to the pandemic, which has abruptly altered the economic landscape.
“When I think about Rock Row, and its positioning relative to the event that we have all collectively gone through, I see it as an opportunity to ask what the next stage of this development model might look like,’” she says. “There’s a lot of things converging at the moment, and I think Rock Row is part of what’s possible to think about at this moment.”
WHAT’S AN INNOVATION DISTRICT?
Economies change all the time, and things are changing faster and faster every year, experts point out. Emerging developments need to adapt and experiment with new ways of doing business. Do they offer shorter-term rents than the traditional 15-year lease? What happens when they offer ground floor space to newer start-up restaurants and retailers instead of established chains? And how does that drive value for signing leases on the upper floors? Do more interesting, little-known retailers and restaurants create greater perceived val-
ue for the entire neighborhood over the big, entrenched chains?
A successful innovation district depends upon experimentation, risk taking and building community, collaboration, and connections between public and private stakeholders—exactly the ethos the Rock Row developers have embraced.
“They are really committed to doing a great job here,” says Fichera. “They’ve been pulling together a lot of these really great stakeholder conversations well in advance of building. They’re excited about the potential to do something different.”
Innovation districts are meant to be geographic regions that foster change and transformation by clustering together leading thinkers and institutions with specialized resources and amenities. They generally include leading-edge anchor institutions and companies that join and connect with start-ups, business incubators, and accelerators. Successful innovation districts typically are physically compact, transit-accessible, technologically wired and offer mixed-use housing, office, and retail space. Such districts have been successful in Boston, Seattle, St. Louis, and many other worldwide sites.
“Around the world, the most successful innovative economies and communities benefit from being part of placebased, high-density clusters, districts, or campuses of creative activity,” said David Shaw, CEO of Black Point Group.
Shaw and others believe emerging fields like life sciences, aquaculture, sustainable farming, and new materials development, would all have a place in Rock Row beside more traditional business disciplines. “I think of an innovation district as a zone of experimentation,” says Fichera. “That’s the fundamental starting point for me. We are saying in some way, that the work that happens here will be forwardlooking and experimental in nature. And that can create a sense of permission and an invitation to collaborate that works in a different way than the way most neighborhood style developments do.”
Similar thinking went into locating the Live Nation amphitheater, which became the Maine Savings Pavilion. The 8,200-seat venue opened in 2019 with a slate of 16 concerts, but none in 2020. Now the plan is to revive the concert schedule beginning this summer. Waterstone says despite the pandemic shutdown, the site has already proven its viability and will likely become a prime concert attraction for Maine. The plan, however, is to make it a year-round venue with the construction of an 8,000seat convention, concert, and meeting center. Apart from some hotel ballrooms in the area, Maine is without a convention center, a glaring weakness, officials say, in luring business, talent, tourists, and revenue to the region.
“There’s a lot of synergy in having a conference center at the heart of an innovation district and adjacent to a medical research campus,” says Levy. “It will drive recruitment, families, science and research. It’s going to make it easier for companies to come here and then be able to attract top talent.”
The medical research campus Levy references is another proof point to the burgeoning Rock Row concept. Last month, Rock Row announced a state-ofthe-art 200,000-sq.-ft. Medical Campus & Research Center that will be a destination for comprehensive care and a national model of advanced, compassionate cancer treatment and research. A full
As the first mass timber building in Maine, 100 Rock Row represents one of the many ways Rock Row will showcase the innovation of Maine’s heritage industries.
array of integrated medical practices and services will be offered at the campus, the company said, beginning with its first occupant, New England Cancer Specialists, which will operate in 40,000 square feet of the main building.
“Our new site at Rock Row will allow us to elevate our advanced cancer research and care by blending it with the healing power of Maine’s beauty,” said Chiara Battelli, MD, president of New England Cancer Specialists.
The six-acre campus will have two buildings—one dedicated to care and research and the second targeted for parking and supporting retail products and services.
Attaching the innovation district label to a project often opens private-public partnerships, in which investments in infrastructure, transportation and other public amenities are more welcome and less risky. Traditional companies also are typically eager to be associated with innovation districts to be seen as willing to try new ideas or, put another way, appear hip.
“It’s a delicate positioning for some companies,” says Fichera. “But one thing that I’ve experienced on these projects is that sometimes just because it’s called an innovation district, it makes it possible for folks in the public sector, or folks in more traditional companies to try new things. In some ways, it can insulate risk because the whole point is to experiment with new ways of doing things. If they don’t all work, that’s kind of the point.”
Levy and his team, along with other state economists and business leaders, envision Rock Row as a new “door” to the state, one that showcases a lot more than lobsters and blueberries and could change people’s perception of what is one of the oldest and least diverse states in the country. A conference center alone could be a big recruitment asset as well as a showcase space for burgeoning new and innovative industries and enterprises as well as the state’s heritage industries. With a projected 6-to-7 million visitors each year, the messages could reverberate widely.
“Rock Row is a doorway to the innovation economy in Maine, and an invitation to the world,” said Fichera. “A successful project will send a message: ‘We are building community, collaboration, and connections in Maine. Come build with us.’”
AN ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTOR
A key reason Waterstone and others have such high hopes for Rock Row is the way they believe it fits with the state’s overall economic strategy and plan. In the fall of 2019, the Maine Department of Eco-
nomic and Community Development produced a 45-page, 10-year economic development strategy that leaned heavily on innovation.
“It is a time-tested concept: innovation drives economic growth,” the report stated. “According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, economists have calculated that 50% of the country’s GDP growth is attributed to increases in innovation.”
Yet while the report found pockets of innovation in the state, particularly the Maine Aqua Ventus project to create the first floating offshore wind platform, or the many microbreweries across the state, Maine, it said, “lacks a clear and supported culture of innovation.”
Moreover, the report said the state needs to add at least 75,000 people to its workforce over the next decade, a period that will otherwise show job declines as the population ages. It must rely on workers from outside the state to fill the gap and welcome immigrants with programs that support rapid credential acceptance and housing and transportation needs.
Most daunting, the report said, many of the new jobs that will be created in Maine in the next 10 years don’t exist today and will have to be created by innovation and new technologies.
Into that environment, enters Rock Row. Waterstone’s Levy and others associated with the development aren’t ready to say definitively that Rock Row will meet and solve the state’s economic development challenges and problems. But it will be a huge step forward.
“Getting the official designation that we’re representing all of Maine puts us in a really strong position to deliver on its economic development strategy,” says Levy. “A lot of people thought we were just building a shopping center. But less than 5% of our 2.5 million square feet is pure retail. There’s a lot more going on here.”
A lot more than what was just a hole in the ground.
This Old Mansard
In December of 2019, the Maine State Chamber of Commerce moved from North Augusta to our current location in the heart of Maine’s capital city. Even before the last painting was hung and the last decoration placed, the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to delay a formal open house gathering. We are hopeful that we will be able to invite visitors to our new home later this year, but, in the meantime, we could not wait to tell you a little bit about its history. Formally known as the Governor William Tudor Gardiner House, the mansion on 128 State Street, Augusta, was built as a residence in the late 1820s by Benjamin Davis. Davis owned and operated Benjamin Davis Store on Water Street in Augusta. He later became the first president of Freeman’s Bank, which was part of the evolution of what we now know as Kennebec Savings Bank.
Another prominent resident of 128 State Street was Colonel James Welch. Welch commanded the 19th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment and was wounded in the battle of Gettysburg and in the battle of Spotsylvania Court House in Virginia. Before World War I, the home was converted by F.H. Burgess to a private school that was operated by Alice Clancey. William Tudor Gardiner, Maine’s 55th governor, and his wife, Margaret Thomas Gardiner purchased the mansion after the first world war. Gardiner served as governor from 1929 to 1933. During his administration, the Great Depression started with the stock market crash of 1929 and the Administrative Code Act was adopted to bring major reform to how state agencies proposed and issued regulations in Maine. Gardiner perished in a plane crash in 1953 while returning from a reunion of the 56th Pioneer Infantry Association in Pennsylvania. One of Governor and Mrs. Gardiner’s four children was Tudor Gardiner, who was married to Tenley Albright, the 1956 Olympic Champion figure skater.
The last family to call 128 State Street home were Mr. and Mrs. William Treby Johnson, a local banking executive. The Johnsons owned the home from 1935 to 1952 and ever since, the home has operated as a commercial property as it does today. Purchased by Donald Lagace, Sr. in 1985, the mansion is owned and operated by Lagace Properties, LLC. Under the expert care of Mr. Lagace’s sons, Don Jr. and Peter, 128 State Street’s original beauty and character continue to shine. We cannot wait for you to visit our new home in person. We are also looking forward to working with you as we add to the rich history of 128 State Street and to the state of Maine.
Thank you to Don Lagace, Jr. of Lagace Properties, LLC and to Emily Schroeder of the Kennebec Historical Society for assisting us in the research for this article.
