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Bowens Pizzeria and Deli closed for good two weeks ago. We enjoyed the food and arcade there.
The East Side of Belfast, where I live, is a business graveyard. At one point in recent years there were at least five restaurants. Now there is one. Three commercial buildings have burnt down without having been rebuilt, and there has been little new activity on Searsport Avenue except for some cannabis operations and an empty lot seemingly operating as a contracting business — in contradiction to Belfast’s restrictive zoning, which prohibits this use. We own an empty commercial lot on Searsport Avenue in the same zone, and Belfast’s heavy list of can’t-do’s is enough that it makes it a rational business decision to let it sit vacant for nearly a decade instead of developing it as we intended.
Just over the border, Searsport’s is seeing a business surge. Reuse of available properties, straightforward approvals, and a municipal posture that appears to begin with how to get a business open rather than how to regulate it. Even after an intrusive Route 1 reconstruction, the town keeps attracting restaurants, a brewery, shops, a gallery and a music venue. While Belfast supplies much of the customer base, Searsport supplies the opportunity.
Belfast has two economic-development employees and a comprehensive plan promising a “nimble and creative economic climate,” stronger commercial activity and regulations that support growth.
What the public actually sees is grant administration: searching for grants, applying for grants, recommending grants and overseeing grants. I have not seen, in my time here, published targets for businesses opened or retained, private investment attracted or taxable sales increased.
Belfast expanded this department four years ago by adding a deputy director position, but without putting in place any metrics for what the position was created for and what problems it was solving.
The Belfast retail market is now flat in nominal dollars and down after inflation. And Belfast is spending down money reserved for sewer expansion — actual economic-development capacity — to repair the existing system.
Belfast has not merely failed to produce an economic-development strategy. It is spending one away.
Most of the visible production of Belfast’s economic development production is producing infrastructure-heavy projects with grant money, which citizens will have to replace at very high costs long after the grants are gone, and new buildings with questionable needs, even though it struggles to maintain what it owns now.