BELFAST, Maine — In early 2024, Chris Gardner knew the bike shop he runs in Belfast was outgrowing its location.
CG Bikes opened in 2019 at 39 Main St., sharing the first-floor retail space with Downshift Coffee.
Gardner began looking for a new home for CG Bikes and found an ideal space — a vacant 1,260-square-foot former gas station and auto repair garage — about a mile away.
“It allowed us to be on one floor, have our own parking lot,” Gardner said. “The visibility was really good. It just made a lot of sense. It seemed like the perfect spot for a bike shop.”
The paved lot outside has plenty of room for customer parking and the fleet of bikes Gardner rents daily during the tourist season. On warm days, he opens the two garage doors for easy access to his always-busy repair shop and the sales floor, which features new and used bikes, apparel, shoes and gear for hardcore and casual cyclists alike.
Gardner leased the space and wondered whether it could one day fulfill his long-term vision of owning the property where his business operates.
“It gives you something to build toward as a business owner. And it gives you stability and some ability to control your own costs,” Gardner said. “That’s not to say that I imagined that this might be for sale or knew it might be for sale, and it wasn’t.”
A year and a half after signing his lease, Gardner approached his landlord about buying the garage. The two worked out a deal, and Gardner began exploring what it would take to build a residence on the site.
“I knew it was a gas station. I knew tanks had been removed in the past,” Gardner said. “I just knew that through word of mouth and living here.”
An earlier environmental assessment of the site revealed a toxic soup below ground: petroleum hydrocarbons, volatile petroleum hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls and heavy metals, including arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and selenium. The property’s Declaration of Environmental Covenants, administered through the Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s Voluntary Response Action Program, prohibits residential construction and allows only industrial or commercial activities on-site.
Before closing on the property, however, Gardner received a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Phase I Environmental Site Assessment through Belfast’s Brownfields Assessment Program, a key step opening a pathway to redevelop the site.
Belfast now has 46 brownfield sites in varying stages of assessment, review and cleanup, according to the U.S. EPA’s Brownfields Near You directory.
At a recent meeting, the Belfast City Council discussed and voted on two of those sites, including CG Bikes — formerly Blood’s Garage — at 34 Northport Ave.
“So, in addition to recently receiving our second cleanup subgrant application, we have received our first cleanup loan application,” Belfast Economic Development Director Thomas Kittredge told city councilors Nov. 4. “We received an application for a cleanup loan from Velo Garage LLC, or Chris Gardner, the owner of [a] 0.35-acre parcel at 34 Northport Ave.”
The city of Belfast is using a $1 million grant from the U.S. EPA to capitalize a Brownfields Revolving Loan and Subgrant Program. For-profit businesses can apply for loans, and nonprofit organizations can apply for grants, to clean up environmental contamination on their properties.
Gardner applied for $250,000 in loan funding through the program at a zero percent interest rate with deferred repayment. Under the cleanup plan outlined in his application, crews will excavate and dispose of contaminated soil off-site, install a vapor barrier and sub-slab depressurization system, and cap the remaining on-site soil with engineered cover systems approved by the Maine DEP.
In one of her final votes, outgoing Belfast Councilor Mary Mortier led a 5-0 approval of the loan.
“So, Chris Gardner’s a local entrepreneur and he has grown his business from a little tiny business in a leased space. And now he owns a building in a very visible place that he can put a sign out for people that drive into town on a main drag to park their car here and rent a bicycle and visit our area,” Mortier said. “This is exciting growth.”
Even with the city’s financing approved, however, Gardner said he has not yet committed to building a residence on the property.
“There’s still a lot to be figured out,” Gardner said. “We have to consider the housing market and whether this is the right time to do this project.”
If he decides to proceed with the redevelopment, Gardner can draw on the $250,000 loan to complete the brownfield cleanup required to meet state standards and make the site safe for his family.
This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.