RICHMOND: Downtown sees vitality as new businesses arrive
BY KEITH EDWARDS
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 05/27/2008

RICHMOND -- This small riverside downtown is filling up with places to fill your belly.

From barbecued Texas-style ribs slow-smoked over mesquite wood to ice cream slathered in chocolate sauce and cherries, grilled panini sandwiches with a pint of cold beer to eggs Benedict and a hot cup of coffee, a diner could eat pretty well morning, noon and night without venturing beyond Richmond's compact downtown.

So between new arrivals such as Baker's Restaurant and the Texas Barbecue Co., and local mainstays such as the Railway Cafe, is there enough business to go around in a town of about 3,400 residents?

"If it were just Richmond alone, no," said Scott McIntire, of Alna, owner of The Old Goat, a Main Street pub and restaurant. "I think to survive here you have to draw from farther away. I think all the businesses in town rely on the fact it's a hub. A lot of the surrounding towns -- Dresden, Bowdoin, Litchfield -- don't have a traditional Main Street, a downtown. Richmond fills the need of people in those towns for a traditional village."

Tim Acord, who has owned the Main Street Dairy Treat ice cream shop with his wife, Cathy, for several years, agrees Richmond businesses like his need to continue to draw customers from beyond Richmond.

He said the recent arrivals of new businesses, including two relatively new Main Street art galleries, are good for residents and longtime local businesses alike.

"I think you have to have a mix, you need that diversity," Acord said. "I think downtown is doing good. Hey, it's as hard here as it is for everyone, especially with these oil bills today. It's a little town. It's working class. But I think for the normal, everyday Joe just trying to make it happen, Richmond is doing a great job."

Many downtown facades have been fixed up in part with funds from a $150,000 state Community Development Block Grant, $100,000 in town funds, and matching investments from business owners, Community and Economic Development Director Darryl Sterling said.

The program helped the Acords give their ice cream shop, which employs six to seven part-time workers, a new look. But the couple went beyond sprucing up their building. They also added a $12,000 "town clock" to the sidewalk in front of the business. The town and Acords split the cost of the historic-looking but new Hamilton clock, which simply tells the time, without providing any advertising of the ice shop itself.

"I didn't want my name on it anywhere," Tim Acord said of the clock. "I just always thought those were really cool, and our town needs to have one of them. My wife and I saved up five years to do that.

"If you ever licked a cone at the Dairy Treat, you helped do it."

This spring, the town was awarded a $500,000 downtown revitalization grant from the state Department of Economic and Community Development. That grant will be combined with about $250,000 in town funds to pay for an array of projects during the next two construction seasons, most of them related to improving sidewalks, landscaping and parking in and around the downtown and waterfront.

Other recent business development in town includes the expansion of East Boothbay-based Hodgdon Yachts to the Richmond Business and Manufacturing Center, a former shoe factory now home to multiple businesses.

Hodgdon, a fifth-generation Maine yacht maker company officials say is the oldest continuously running shipyard in America, plans to build interiors for high-end yachts in Richmond. The company expects to bring 15 to 17 current workers with them to Richmond and hire another 35 workers within two years.

"The new jobs at Hodgdon, the creative economy, eco-tourism and recreation, it's all coming together to have Richmond rising into a renaissance," Sterling said.

But some things have gone, too.

A Curves fitness studio once located near the Richmond Business and Manufacturing Center has closed. Pie company Naturally ME, according to Burt Batty, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, has gone out of business at that location, too. And the former Front Street Market store and takeout restaurant closed earlier this year.

Batty said the town is looking for a good mix of businesses that fit Richmond's small-town feel. "We're always looking for additional businesses to complement what we have," Batty said. "We don't want five pubs in town. We're very mindful of trying to keep the feel and look of Richmond. We just want a small-town community that's healthy economically and environmentally."

West Texas native Mark Bell and his wife, Terry, have lived in Richmond for the last 17 years, but just moved their catering and pre-packaged takeout business, the Texas Barbeque Co., to Richmond this year, after closing their restaurant in Auburn.

They cater out of a commercial kitchen at their Richmond home. But they decided to also open a small storefront downtown.

"The Richmond location is just a little storefront but it's been very good," Bell said.

The storefront sells prepackaged, slow-smoked ribs, pulled pork, beef brisket, their own barbecue sauce, and other items, all to go.

"We're not a restaurant, so we're not really competing with the Railway or Bakers," Bell said. "You take ours home, heat and eat. If you want a sit-down meal, we're not the source for that."

The Bells offer Texas-style barbecue that's cooked over mesquite wood and shipped to Maine. Texas-style barbecue is generally smoked and dry-rubbed, with no sauce added during the cooking process.

About a block away from the barbecue business across Main Street, Jack and Kathy Baker opened Baker's Restaurant about two months ago in the original site of the Old Goat.

Currently, the place only serves breakfast but may expand to offer lunch.

Jack Baker said he's been in the restaurant business since the 1940s. He was president of a company with a chain of 22 restaurants, but retired 23 years ago. Since then, he's opened four different restaurants in his "retirement."

"I can't stay retired, I'm 77 but I think I'm 40," he said.

Baker said he and Kathy moved to town five years ago and recently decided to open their small restaurant.

Of course, businesses need people and people need a reason to come. One event organizers estimate brought as many as 3,000 people to Richmond was the "Taking Panes," display of art at the Ames Mill building on the Kennebec River waterfront.

The Old Goat's new function room also pulls people into town when it's rented.

McIntire said on a typical weekend when the function room is rented out, The Old Goat will have about 30 people upstairs and another 30 customers at the pub below. On a "really good" night, as many as 90 people may come. The Goat employs two full-time and five part-time staff.

The function room was added when McIntire moved into what had previously been a bank building, with a dated metal facade.

In renovating the building, McIntire discovered an elegant iron facade that, once uncovered, has given the building an historic look.

The building, according to a history of it prepared by local historian John "Jay" Robbins Jr., was built by William Henry Stuart, maker of fine edged tools, and Civil War soldier, judge, and legislator, Lt. Col. Joseph Whitman Spaulding, in 1877.

For those worried partaking in the mix of new and old local dining options could result in too many inches around the waist, there's also a new place to burn off some calories, just around the corner and a block away on Front Street.

It's "River... a place for movement," a new fitness studio and yoga and pilates center just opened by Nancy Cote.

That business operates seven days a week and offers treadmills, elliptical machines, bikes, trampolines, free weights, group exercises and a fitness room.

Keith Edwards -- 621-5647

kedwards@centralmaine.com

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