Ellsworth's economy, once reliant on retail, is getting creative

Ken Perrin blows air into a molten blob of glass at an open studio event at Atlantic Art Glass in Ellsworth on Dec. 16, 2017.

Ellsworth, nicknamed "the crossroads of Downeast Maine," has long been where Hancock County residents can buy mundane stuff -- groceries, automobiles, casual clothes, etc. The few strip malls, car repair shops, government offices and fast-food drive-thrus gave the city a no-frills, utilitarian feel; a place to run needed errands, but not a place to linger.

That drab reputation has contrasted sharply with much of the surrounding area, which is known for the rugged scenic shoreline and mountainous beauty of Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park, as well as the Blue Hill and Schoodic peninsulas. Ellsworth, useful as it may be, just doesn't captivate the imagination as do other more idyllic towns along the Maine coast.

But in recent years the city has been subtly diversifying and is starting to develop an added reputation as a good place to make stuff, too. Not mass-produced widgets or cheeseburgers, but low-volume (mostly), high-craftmanship specialty items. Skilled, creative people looking to ply their wares and to come together to help define their community are doing it in Ellsworth.

One of the most immediate reasons for this is the coastal Maine real estate market - especially on MDI, where Acadia takes up thousands of acres and where seasonal tourist-oriented businesses and residential properties otherwise dominate the landscape. Property is at a premium on the island (and elsewhere along the coast) and getting more expensive all the time, making it a challenging place for non-tourism or property (i.e., real estate, building trades, etc.) businesses to operate.

And houses on MDI are not cheap. People who work regular jobs and who want to live on MDI have to compete against better-heeled people from out of state and want to own a summer home next to Acadia, or against investment buyers who want to own and operate vacation rentals on the island. Many working would-be home buyers purchase homes in Trenton or Ellsworth, often for prices much lower than what MDI has to offer.

It is not just individual people, some of who make and sell specialty items and need work space as well as a home, who run into this problem.

Hinckley, the MDI yacht maker, bought and developed land in Trenton in the late 1990s when it decided to expand its luxury picnic boat business because A) that's where there was adequate space at a reasonable price and B) it is closer to where many of their skilled craftsmen and women live off-island. Rainwise, the weather instruments maker, moved from downtown Bar Harbor to Trenton in 2013, for more room and to simplify the logistics of shipping its products.

The Jackson Laboratory, the world-renown biomedical research lab, is moving the lion's share of its research mouse production division to Ellsworth (into the renovated former Lowe's retail store) for the same reasons: there is more room to grow, at a cheaper cost, and it simplifies transportation issues - both for shipping its mice to customers and for its employees to who currently commute to Bar Harbor from as far away as Bangor or Washington County.

What is happening in Ellsworth -- specifically, in downtown Ellsworth -- doesn't directly involve these companies, however. It involves smaller operators who have a more immediate (i.e., local) audience in mind.

There have been restaurants operating on lower Main Street for decades, and skilled craftspeople at Beals Jewelry and Pyramid Studios, but the current growth of the city's downtown creative community can trace its roots back to the early and mid-2000s.

In 2002, Rich Hanson and his wife Cary opened Cleonice on Main Street, and their upscale international cuisine immediately kicked up the city's culinary options by several notches. The restaurant quickly attracted a loyal following and drew people from a wide radius. Within a few years, Hanson became the first restaurateur ever in Ellsworth to be named a semi-finalist for the James Beard Awards' Best Chef Northeast.

Three years later in 2005, glassblowers Ken and Linda Perrin moved their Atlantic Art Glass studios from Bar Harbor to an old brick warehouse on Pine Street, one block south of Main Street, primarily for the additional room it afforded them. Once they had the space, they wanted to get more involved in the community by offering workshops and hosting other arts training opportunities, and so created Artsworth, a nonprofit arts outreach organization.

Since then, over the past 12-15 years, the presence of the arts and the diversification of culinary options in downtown Ellsworth has continued to grow.

Courthouse Gallery Fine Arts opened in 2006. SevenArts Gallery and jeweler Cara Romano have opened shops in the Flexit Cafe building. The Grand Auditorium, a longtime mainstay for the performing arts in eastern Maine, improved its facilities and continues to offer a variety of programming (films, ballet, live music, theater, etc.).

On the gastronomy side, things have changed since I last blogged about Ellsworth's food and drink options nearly six years ago, the most significant change being the tragic death of Rich Hanson, who passed away in the fall of 2016.

Rich and Cary closed Cleonice in 2014, after moving up the street and trying a different approach by teaming with the Maine Grind. They also ran Table restaurant in Blue Hill for two summers, while also running Cleonice. In 2015 they took a turn at operating the Raven's Nest in Winter Harbor (in the former Mama's Boy Bistro, owned by Roxanne Quimby) before moving to Florida, where Rich later passed away.

His influence lives on. 86 This, owned and operated by former Table employees Jeff and Diane Kelly-Lokocz, has since moved into a bigger space further up Main Street. A restaurant called Provender just opened in the space formerly occupied by Cleonice (after Cellar Bistro operated there for a few years), maintaining the status of the location as a higher-end eatery, which was first established by the Hansons.

The Maine Grind is now the aforementioned Flexit Cafe, ably owned and operated by local husband-and-wife duo Paul Markosian and Lorena Stearns (who also own Finn's three doors down). The space formerly occupied by 86 This, at the lower traffic light on Main Street, now is home to Serendib, an authentic (and quite good) Indian and Sri Lankan restaurant.

And now Ellsworth has its own beer, too. Airline Brewing, which makes mostly English-style ales in Amherst, opened its own Old World-style pub next to The Grand in 2016. And just in December, Fogtown Brewing opened the city's first craft brewery (they actually make their beer in Ellsworth) in a renovated space directly underneath the Perrins' glass studio.

Does all this mean Ellsworth has been reborn, or is now home to a genuine artistic/creative scene? Making that assertion might be a bit of a stretch.

Ellsworth still is weighed down by the decline of brick-and-mortar retail. Much of the Maine Coast Mall is unoccupied, Lowe's closed in 2011 after less than 3 years in business, and Tim Hortons on outer State Street went under a few months ago. The former J and B Atlantic store on Main Street remains empty since it closed in 2016, though it did house the temporary Holiday Marketplace this December and a dance studio has opened in part of the space.

The city also lacks a first-run movie theater (the one at the mall closed in 2015) and a genuine bookstore, though you can buy books at some places like Walmart or Union River Book and Toy store, which is geared toward kids. Nor does it have a downtown boutique hotel that might appeal to some tourists (unlike Bangor, Stonington, Belfast, Camden and Rockland, to name a few). There are some farms in Ellsworth and surrounding towns, but it seems there is more room for agricultural growth in and around the city.

City officials, to their credit, has been actively trying to diversify Ellsworth's business base to include sectors other than traditional retail, the writing for which has been on the walls for a decade or more. The city helped guide the Perrins through the permitting process when they purchased and converted the Pine Street warehouse into their studio, and according to the Fogtown brewers the city planning office was very encouraging when they walked in to ask about opening a brewery.

Ellsworth also has been actively encouraging outdoor recreational development, which in the city used to be limited to a few small trails at the Birdsacre wildlife sanctuary or Woodlawn Museum. It lobbied the state to extend the Downeast Sunrise Trail into central Ellsworth (behind the L.L. Bean outlet); it developed a walking trail along the old rail line between Birch Avenue and North Street; and in 2010 it opened the Branch Lake Public Forest. When it closed the Moore and Knowlton schools (consolidating students at the renovated middle school up the road), it converted the Moore building into a community center and the Knowlton property into a public park.

The city's resources are limited, of course, and it does not have the ability to compete with the federal funding that makes Acadia National Park possible. Nor can it magically create scenic coastal views such as those found on MDI or at any other numerous picturesque locales along the coast. But, aside from cheaper housing, it does have other advantages over several towns in the area.

Like much of the state, Ellsworth greatly benefits from the summer tourist season, but it is much less seasonal than nearby coastal towns. Many stores (not all) get boarded up for the winter in Blue Hill, Stonington, Northeast Harbor, and even in Bar Harbor -- a phenomenon many shopkeepers there have been trying to resist for decades -- but in Ellsworth such seasonal closures are nearly nonexistent. The swings between summer madness and winter doldrums are less dramatic, and less visible to the casual observer.

The city's location, relative to surrounding towns, also is an advantage. It is roughly a half-hour drive from Ellsworth to the MDI villages of Bar Harbor, Northeast Harbor, and Southwest Harbor; to Gouldsboro and Winter Harbor; to Blue Hill and to Bucksport - and it is the central community that connects many of these towns to each other. All of them are easily accessible from Ellsworth for work commutes, trips to the shore, or outings in Acadia. Bangor, which has more entertainment and job opportunities than anywhere else in eastern Maine, is a little more than a half hour away.

It is the combination of these things that is making Ellsworth a more appealing place for artisans to set up shop, and to live in general - and it could have other indirect economic benefits.

As the city attracts more skilled people who make and sell their own products - be they farmers, brewers, artisans, or purveyors of locally made food - it might help breathe a little life back into the traditional retail sector that has suffered over the past decade. And it could help create a more 'genuine' (i.e., year-round and affordable) community that would have its own appeal among the area's tourist destinations.