Orono town councilors approved the initial step toward creating a committee to oversee its downtown revitalization.
The council’s community development committee was tasked with designing the structure for such a group on Monday. Moving forward with this plan will give Orono residents the opportunity to be included in the revisioning of the town’s downtown, Council Chair Dan Demeritt said on Monday.
“All of those ideas that have been finding their way to our inbox over the past several months or years, we can reach out to those people and see if they want to be heard on it,” Demeritt said.
The downtown committee would be the council’s first step toward realizing a goal from Orono’s latest comprehensive plan. That plan ultimately pointed to downtown, among other locations, as a potential area for growth and also presented ideas for mixed-use spaces to attract more residents and businesses.
The outline of a revisioning plan was brought forward by the town’s new Planning and Economic Development Manager EJ Roach in January based on input received from residents while forming the comprehensive plan.
The number of members and who they will be, as well as which date the committee will be formed, will be set by the community development committee, which will begin that work on Feb. 18, Councilor Matt Powers said on Monday.
Roach was previously the economic development director in Old Town, which conducted a similar revitalization plan. The plan brought more residents downtown with local events but some storefronts remained empty.
For that plan, Roach worked with a consulting company that brought ideas to the city for how to improve business, foot traffic and interactions with residents.
A similar desire for an updated downtown was shown in Orono’s 2025 comprehensive plan approved this January, Roach said during a presentation on Jan. 26, especially in the community feedback.
“All the things people describe through the community process of the comprehensive plan, they’re talking about the downtown. They don’t call it out every time but they say, ‘these are the things we want,’” Roach said.
The revisioning process would include the town entering a contract with Downtown Development Services, an Ohio-based company that focuses on downtown programming, to create an actionable plan, Roach said in January.
Roach previously worked with Downtown Development Services in Old Town, he said.
The estimates for the contract are less than $10,000, Town Manager Clint Deschene said on Monday.
Orono could do an internal review of its downtown, Roach said, but bringing in an outside company is helpful for removing local bias and seeing projects that an internal process may not find.
The consultant chosen would give a “deep dive” into the downtown to see the needs of the community and create a plan to make it happen, Roach said.
“It really gives us an opportunity to take all of the assets and put it into a plan we can work through in the next three to five years to really make it stick,” Roach said.
Councilors said the opportunity to revitalize Orono’s downtown was exciting and something residents have talked about in recent years.
“It’s a really nice convergence of things and a chance to do things that folks in the community, at least since I’ve been on council, have been asking for,” Council Vice-Chair Sarah Marx said on Jan. 26.