The heart of Brooklin was bustling on Friday morning: bicyclists in the street, families on the lawn of the library, carloads of visitors heading into the general store.
But there’s more going on in this coastal Hancock County town beyond the daily routines of a Maine summer.
Within the last decade, new businesses have come to Brooklin’s main stretch and others have changed hands, a trend that has ramped up this year: a new restaurant opened in place of a longtime eatery that had been closed, the library broke ground on a multi-million dollar expansion that will double its size, and the town is trying to determine the future of a landmark former church and accompanying hall that its former shrinking congregation decided to give away.
Big changes are not the norm for quiet coastal Maine towns where residents generally outnumber crowds of tourists and central villages amount to a handful of buildings. But shifts are underway in Brooklin that build on a trend of revitalization in town and attract new attention.
“The energy is definitely there,” said Matthew Carter, who opened Astro eatery this year serving hot dogs, fries, ice cream and beer in an empty space that was once the longtime home of the Morning Moon breakfast restaurant. “It’s all interconnected, all the time.”
He saw an initial wave of that energy come to town within the last decade or so, including the Leaf & Anna gift shop and Brooklin Candy Company. In 2019, couples John and Jenny Lewandowski and Pi Piraeus and Peter Collier bought the Brooklin Inn, now with a restaurant and pub attached. At the time, they told the Bangor Daily News they wouldn’t mind if it became the center of social life in town.
Several years later, Alissa Wagner and Graham Macbeth bought the Brooklin General Store, which had been intermittently closed and out of supplies in the years before, and fully demolished and rebuilt before that. It’s now open and stocked consistently with regular hours and community events.
Carter is friends with both Wagner and Lewandowski from past local food service jobs and described a series of dominoes falling in place to make their three businesses possible. He went on to work the counter at the general store and ran a shaved ice business in its yard last summer, where he looked longingly at the empty Morning Moon.
The owners heard of his interest, and now he’s leasing the building this year with plans to buy it in the fall.
Carter said not everyone has welcomed changes in town at first. He was braced for negative feedback when opening his own new spot, which he named as a nod to the former decades-old establishment.
But the experience has been positive, and he thinks his familiarity as “the guy from the general store,” rather than someone dropping in from out of town, helped smooth the transition.
Across the road, a new building was under construction Friday morning to grow the Friend Memorial Public Library as its main building filled with families gathering for a story time.
The expansion project, which broke ground this spring, will house the new Anne and Maynard Bray Maritime Research Center. A $4 million capital campaign is ongoing.
The expansion will feature materials donated by Jon Wilson, founder of the storied local WoodenBoat school and magazine, plus more than 155,000 photographs from maritime photographer Benjamin Mendlowitz. The library expects the research center to grow.
It also adds reading nooks, soundproof rooms for remote work, additional staff space and space for public events, according to director Catherine Nevin. Currently, bookcases have to be moved to make way for the many public programs it hosts.
Nevin, who grew up in town, said she’s also noticed new energy in Brooklin over the last few years, and the library’s busy programming schedule includes partnerships with businesses across the street.
“I think it’s important to make sure we’re all working together,” she said.
Just up the road sits the large, white, empty Baptist church that has anchored the downtown almost since Brooklin’s founding. It was once a busy community hub of its own, but membership shrank to less than 10 people in recent years.
“It was a different world,” Mike Sherman, president of its board of trustees, previously said of his 1960s childhood attending the church.
Seeing the “writing on the wall,” the congregation made plans to dissolve and offered to donate their church and neighboring Bowden Hall to the town along with $100,000 for upkeep, which residents voted to accept in April.
The property transfer was set to close this week, but any changes to how the two buildings are used are likely at least a year away, according to select board member Stacia Nevin. The hall hosts a food pantry and services by another pastor.
“We want to make sure we’re very careful and thoughtful about this process,” she said.
A new committee is set to form this month to steer the future use and management of the buildings. It will be made up of year-round residents to develop plans that will include using the property through the winter months, according to Nevin.
She also observes excitement about the activity downtown, and hopes a period of revitalization will spotlight Brooklin’s desirability – particularly in light of low enrollment at its elementary school, which was built to accommodate 120 students but now has fewer than 60.
On the flip side, the town is already popular among retirees and second homebuyers. Less than half of its homes are now occupied full-time, according to Hancock County Planning Commission data.
Carter said the newer business owners are in their late 30s and early 40s, and thinks there would be even more youthful activity in town if more accessible housing and rentals were available. He and his peers bought homes before the pandemic pushed property values even higher, and he worries about the next generation.
The initial energy he noticed in Brooklin years ago, and Deer Isle before that, was generally spurred by people who had grown up in the area and come home as young adults, he said.
Many of Catherine Nevin’s peers left the area for college and want to return, she said, but can’t find a place to live on the peninsula and instead are trying to work their way back home along the coast.
The housing shortage is a complicated issue that the state has struggled to meaningfully address; in Brooklin, one of her fellow select board members refers to it as a “hairball,” Stacia Nevin said.
But the town is trying to revive a housing committee, she said, to add to efforts in neighboring towns to look at increasing affordable choices. An earlier housing committee was overwhelmed by the task and disbanded about 15 years ago, according to Nevin.
On the whole, she sees Brooklin as a town with many dedicated residents who commit their time to making it what it is, evidenced by collaboration among local groups.
“I think it’s just a classic example of people coming together and working together, and if people can put aside their own agendas and their egos, it works really well,” she said. “And I think it’s working really well right now.”
