Bath man, 80, continues legacy of advocating for Maine downtowns

BATH, Maine — Call him the King of Maine Downtowns.

Twenty years ago, Walmart was in the midst of building a new store in Brunswick, which William King Jr. saw as an ominous threat to the vibrancy of nearby downtown Bath. So King, who already had logged a couple of decades in tireless advocacy of the city, wrote a letter to The Times Record in Brunswick.

King hoped his letter would catch the ear of a few locals, but its ripple effects went far beyond midcoast Maine.

First the Wall Street Journal published the letter on its front page. Then ABC-TV picked it up, and before long King found himself doing interviews with national magazines.

“That letter got us a lot of national attention,” said King recently. “It raised the flag in front of the local merchants, saying ‘what are you going to do?’”

Two decades later, downtown Bath is as vibrant as it has been since bygone days when side-by-side shipyards earned the little city on the Kennebec River the nickname “City of Ships.” Most people know Bath as the home of Bath Iron Works, which continues the city’s shipbuilding heritage alone. Just a few steps away, though, is what King regards as an example of what can happen when people put a little effort into preserving their downtowns.

In 2000, the Bath Business Association was the latest chapter in a history of aggressive downtown promotions that began in 1910 — a good 20 years before there was a chamber of commerce in the area — with the Bath Merchants Association. At the time, King owned a small shop called RVI which sold recreational vehicle helmets and served as a retailer for various motorized power equipment. He co-founded the BBA with Jayne Palmer, another long-time Bath retailer, and many others to organize up to a dozen special downtown promotions every year. But events like those don’t happen easily, especially for small organizations like the Bath Business Association.

“The BBA had become so successful, but we couldn’t make it fly anymore as an all-volunteer organization,” said King. “One day I decided to sit down and make a list of the projects I was working on. I wrote down 32 different projects I was involved in at one time. That was about 1990 and I knew we couldn’t go on this way.”

Then in 1999 — with the help of a slew of people, including King — the Maine Downtown Center was created under the umbrella of the Maine Development Foundation and the National Trust for Historic Places. Among its initiatives is the Main Street program, which today is active in nine municipalities across Maine, with another dozen involved in the center’s Maine Downtown Network. Bath became one of the first four Main Street communities in 2000. King, 80, retired recently from his career in retail but remains a senior consultant for the Maine Downtown Center and chairman of its advisory council. That means he spends at least a couple of days a week traveling all over Maine to help other downtowns promote themselves or move toward a Main Street designation.

King knows a little about running a business — including the fact that outside influences can trigger disaster.

In 1956, King joined his father’s business, Harrington, King and Co., which served shipping companies in the Boston area by providing supplies and services while their vessels were in port. But ship chandlers were a dying breed and over the years the business began to diversify, first into canvas awnings and boat accessories. In the 1960s, when snowmobiles were becoming popular, the company became the New England distributor for Polaris. King found himself in a niche that would define most of his adult working life.

King represented Polaris and other snowmobile brands for years, learning along the way what a risk it is to own another company’s retail franchises. For a period in the early 1970s, King had seven attorneys on the Harrington, King and Co. payroll, all of them dealing with the fallout from a failed distributorship agreement that was so severe that one of King’s dealers actually faked his own death in an attempt to escape his financial liability.

“It was a terrible time,” said King.

In 1972, he left his family’s company and started RVI, which carried on as a distributor of big-ticket items such as snowmobiles, motorized log splitters and mopeds. King and his wife, Jane, moved to West Bath and his snowmobile business flourished under several different brands. For a time, RVI had snowmobile racing teams all over northern New England. King, looking for a year-round revenue source, began to specialize in selling helmets. For some 40 years, that’s what he did, moving RVI to Bath in the early 1980s.

Then last year, another uncontrollable factor stepped in: fire. In just a few short hours, King’s business was gutted by flames, forcing him to move to a temporary location on Elm Street near his beloved Bath downtown. But personal factors were coming into play. King’s wife died in 2010 and he celebrated his 80th birthday this year. He knew it was time for a change, so he sold RVI and its franchises to Bath Industrial Sales.

But that doesn’t mean King intends to slow down when it comes to advocating for downtowns. He said he intends to remain involved in the Maine Downtown Center as long as he can.

“I’ll stay on as long as I can continue to contribute something,” he said recently. “Jayne [Palmer] and I will stay involved as long as we can share our knowledge and be useful.”