Aroostook developer turns an old school into a 4-season retreat

A Monticello developer dreamed of building a sledders’ haven. Now he’s hammering the finishing touches on what has evolved into a four-season destination.

Littleton native Todd Thompson, 66, bought the 16,000-square-foot Wellington School in Monticello five years ago, along with an adjacent 25 acres of partially wooded riverside land.

His idea to create a center with hospitality services for snowmobilers has blossomed into the Old School Plaza, which will serve not only sledders but the local community and year-round outdoor adventurers.

“Old School Plaza is the center of Monticello like the school was,” Thompson said.

With local towns like Houlton, Island Falls and Patten expanding multiuse trail access, Thompson’s outdoor explorer haven fits right into a growing County trend and also dovetails with Maine’s rapidly expanding outdoor economy.

According to the Maine Office of Outdoor Recreation, outdoor-related business made up 4% of the state’s economy, ranking sixth in the country in the value that outdoor recreation contributed to the statewide gross domestic product.

Thompson, who is also a finish carpenter, still has to complete the restaurant, but he intends to open the rest of the complex at 36 School St. in a month or so to have everything running for summer and fall.

He completed most of the work himself. The plaza already includes a commercial laundromat, a 25-by-100-foot grocery store with 65 feet of refrigerator and freezer space, a barber shop, 25 storage units, a taxi service and a camping area. There’s more to come.

“It took me a lot longer to do what I was anticipating because it’s hard to find help up here,” Thompson said. “You can have all the dreams you want, but you can’t fulfill them when you don’t have help.”

He wants to invite budding and established entrepreneurs to rent and run many of the spaces, which include additional 40-by-40-foot rooms. Someone out there may have an idea and could find the exact space they were looking for there, he said.

Thompson has tackled seemingly impossible projects throughout his career. He gained notoriety and a New York Times nod in the early 2000s for his restoration work on P.T. Barnum’s blighted Victorian neighborhood in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Drugs had taken a toll, homes were derelict and squatters took shelter in abandoned spots that were once part of the famed circus man’s elaborate neighborhood.

At the time, Thompson was elected president of the Washington Park Revitalization Association as the group restored 10 Victorians that were used for low- to middle-income properties, he said.

The neighborhood transformation was so dramatic, the revitalization association won the  2002 National Trust for Historic Preservation Award.

For now, Thompson has more local things on his mind. His decision to return to his Maine roots included developing a project for his retirement.

He bought the Monticello school for $84,000, and wasn’t sure what he would do with it. As he has created every space, the vision has grown.

“When I came here I had a lot of money and thought I would get help, but people up here don’t really want to work, so I did it all myself,” he said.

 

Old School Plaza contains nostalgic reminders of chalk, friends and childhood banter. The original water fountains, hand-painted murals and classroom numbers are untouched. The barber shop is in classroom No. 6 and another classroom — complete with an original mural — is now the coin-operated laundromat with five large commercial washers and five commercial dryers.

The property once was a cattle farm, and still has fruit trees: plum, pear, peach and Golden Delicious apple. He harvested logs from his land and milled many of them to build the cabins in the campground and 25 10-by-20-foot storage units.

Building a large plaza can be a challenge when doing all the work alone, which he said is sometimes humbling.

Two years ago on Christmas Eve, winds were clocked at about 85 to 95 miles per hour. The frame of the storage unit facility was leveled and he had to start over again, he said. But now, the extra large units with 10-foot ceilings are ready to rent for $99 a month.

Summer plans, in addition to the store, laundromat and cabins, include potential flea markets where vendors could store and sell out of the storage facility.

The plaza’s grocery store will be the largest between Bridgewater and Houlton, Thompson said.

He hopes a grocer will rent the space. Otherwise, he will open and run it himself, selling fresh vegetables from his garden and keeping longer hours than other small stores in the area, he said.

While he was constructing the store, he got an unexpected break. He was loading groceries into his car when he saw a large sign about a fixture sale at the now closed Walgreens on North Street in Houlton.

He bought out the store shelving for an incredible price, he said. On the last day of the sale, he made an offer on the drug store’s 65 feet of coolers, but he was turned down. Someone else had bid. But a short time later, the store manager called him to say the first deal fell through.

After a bit of negotiating, Thompson got the equipment for the Old School Plaza store.

“To finish this project and create a space for people to share with their family, to see children with grandparents having fun,” he said. “You can’t buy that.”