On the Threshold: The Story of Bangor’s Urban Renewal

On the Threshold: The Story of Bangor’s Urban Renewal
By Tom McCord
Staff Writer Bangor Daily News

Part 1 of a monthly series showing how Bangor has changed since voting to create an Urban Renewal Authority in 1958.

Maybe it was the racing ostriches at Bass Park.

Or the fabulous Dancing Waters, the 800-pound birthday cake, the 25,000 people craning their necks on Main Street to see the Paul Bunyan parade.

Or maybe it was the Packers-Giants exhibition game or the New Year’s Eve bonfire crackling with 13,000 Christmas trees.

In 1959, Bangor’s civic fathers and mothers dreamed up a 125th anniversary celebration of their city, and just about anybody who was there has a favorite memory.

Yet those flamboyant, kitschy, joyous events overshadowed significant changes under way those same months in Bangor a half-century ago.

Amid the anniversary fireworks were some little-celebrated milestones that would come to mark a gradual shift in direction for a city of approximately 30,000 people just beginning to get comfortable with TV dinners, Sputnik, interstates and pizza.

Within about 18 months, from mid-1958 to early 1960, the following occured:

-- A $2 million shopping center — the city’s first — opened on sleepy Broadway, complete with the new discount retailer Zayre, old-timer W.T. Grant and a score of smaller stores.

-- The city started pumping its fresh drinking water from Fields Pond in nearby Otis (but was still dumping 5 million gallons per day of raw sewage into the Kenduskeag Stream and Penobscot River).

-- An “industrial spur” — later called Interstate 395 — opened, connecting Main Street to the still unfinished Interstate 95.

-- The city bought 40 acres off Broadway for a Modernist building designed to be the largest high school in the state.

-- Voters approved an Urban Renewal Authority to plan “modern” housing and shopping districts.

-- The Air Force constructed a 530-unit housing complex named for an obscure Indiana senator named Homer Capehart; started spending $29 million on a 215-acre missile installation waiting to shoot down Soviet bombers; and completed a 13,460-foot-long runway at Dow Air Force Base, where construction crew members tossed coins into the cement for good luck.

And, at the end of 1959, the city manager was able to report a $220,000 surplus.

“I think Bangor always wants to see itself on the cutting edge of change and is proud that it sees itself that way,” said Marc Berlin, 57, a downtown bookstore owner who published a history of the city in 1999. Yet Bangor’s leaders have always feared their city would become part of what Berlin calls “marginalized, forgotten places.”

“And I think Bangor has tried hard its whole history to resist that. I think successfully — although, when you look at the circumstances, you’d say, ‘How has it resisted?’”

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A vote for modern: The story of Bangor’s urban renewal, Part II of a series
By Tom McCord
Staff Writer Bangor Daily News

Part II of a monthly series showing how Bangor has changed since voting to create an Urban Renewal Authority in 1958.


BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ERIC ZELZ

“The obvious and practical solution” to Bangor’s downtown problems is urban renewal, stated a glossy brochure published by the Urban Renewal Authority shortly before a June 1964 referendum. This illustration includes a photo of a model of what a renewed downtown would look like. Opponents displayed a countermodel. It showed plenty of empty lots.

On a warm June night in 1964, nearly 800 people crowded into the auditorium of Bangor’s 70-year-old City Hall on Hammond Street for a heart-wrenching discussion about their community’s future.

One by one, men and women, old and young, walked to a lighted podium and, for four hours, laid out their ambitions, fears, frustrations and hopes — all tied to an “urban renewal” referendum two weeks later that, if passed, would demolish some 100 buildings covering 50 acres surrounding the heart of old Bangor at Ken-duskeag Stream, including parts of Exchange and Broad streets.

The vote was on a proposal called the Kenduskeag Stream Urban Renewal Project. It promised government-sponsored purchase of dilapidated buildings and land as well as government help with relocation expenses. It suggested — but could not promise — that new businesses, especially retail, then would move in, providing a renaissance for downtown Bangor within five years.

“I cannot agree with those who think we have exceeded our limits, those who look to the past,” said the City Council chairman, Nicholas P. Brountas. Urban renewal “is the one dynamic plan designed to cope with the problems of downtown Bangor, restoring the city to the commercial prominence it once realized.”

An Exchange Street businessman, Albert Friedman, told the crowd he had watched the city languish the previous 20 years. “Today, it is awakening to find that the world has passed it by — almost,” he said.

But Henry Segal, another downtown businessman, called the proposal “a travesty on the American principle of free enterprise and private initiative.” He opposed taking property from some to give to others. “We do not want bulldozers and boondogglers for Bangor,” he said.

Yet Albert Blanchard of the Junior Chamber of Commerce focused on the future, saying, “We as young citizens don’t want to live and work in a society governed by clipper ships.”

On June 15, the city voted 4,044 to 3,568 in favor of the plan. Downtown Bangor would be modern.

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