BANGOR, Maine (WABI) – Do you remember Porteous? How about Mr. Paperback? What about at Christmas time getting your picture taken on Santa’s lap?
Whether you were a kid back-to-school shopping, a mall walker, or someone who wanted to get everything they needed in one place, the Bangor Mall meant many things to everyone who visited.
Grace Bradley took a trip down memory lane to see the ways the mall impacted the Queen City, diving deep into the Bangor Mall’s popular past, dwindling present, and uncertain future.
The Stillwater Ave. of today can be characterized by its bustling traffic and big box stores, but it wasn’t always this way.
Bangor historian Dick Shaw recounts a time before traffic lights and Chick-Fil-A on the street: “To the mid-late 50s, it was just the Davis Farm. There’d be cows grazing.”
As Shaw says, this all changed by 1978 when the city welcomed the Bangor Mall.
“There was a lot of excitement in the air. Very heady experience that, you know, Bangor had arrived,” Shaw describes of the energy the mall brought. “Because the ’70s were a time of retail and stores were coming in, and it was going to be a York Steakhouse, Porteous was a big chain store based in Portland. JCPenney even had a little salad bar, and you could go out there and just kind of kill hours walking around.”
Karen Cole, the former marketing director for the Bangor Mall, filled out the mall’s calendar with promotional and community events “almost every weekend” during her tenure of 1987 to 1995.
“We did a lot of work with nonprofits in the area,” Cole explains. “I think it was just important because the Bangor Mall, at the time, was such an integral part of the community, and not just Bangor, but the whole surrounding area.”
These efforts, Cole says, included a fundraiser to place a stuffed panda on each pediatric patient bed at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center and even building the first Habitat for Humanity house in Bangor.
Not only did the mall contribute to the city’s culture, but was a major economic driver, too.
“They were, you know, for a long time, the largest taxpayer in the city,” Anne Krieg, the City of Bangor’s director of Economic and Community Development, says of the mall. “That was a big generator to pay for services for the city, for sure.”
James Gerety was the Bangor Mall’s general manager from 2003 to 2018.
“Here in Bangor, it was the only regional shopping center, and at that time, it was an attraction for customers that lived further away than just the immediate community,” Gerety recalls. “There would be days where there would be five and six of these large buses that would stop at Bangor filled with Canadian shoppers.”
He says the mall was still a major market, seeing over half of occupancies filled, during his tenure but saw a shift toward the end: “My job changed over that period from being more of a manager of the property to more of a manager of an asset, meaning that more emphasis was placed on return on investment.”
In 2019, the Bangor Mall saw new ownership of New York-based Namdar Realty Group, who reportedly purchased the property for $12.6 million.
Over time, occupancy numbers at the mall dropped and more complaints of the potholes, leaky roof and a sign missing letters, leading more eyes to be on the investment group.
“With a higher occupancy, number of stores, department stores, they contribute as part of their lease requirements into a common area maintenance, and that fee, those monies, are used to maintain the property,” explains Gerety. “The higher the occupancy, the larger the pot of money. If you don’t have high occupancy, ownership has to put it in out of their own pockets, and that’s not the way business is done.”
Cole expressed a common sentiment held by locals who saw the evolution of the Bangor Mall: nostalgia over what was, and disappointment for its current state.
“To see that beautiful marble all crumbled and the leaks in the ceiling and the holes in the parking lot and just the empty stores, it’s just terrible. I never thought I’d see the day. Ever,” Cole says. “I think just times changed, you know? And not for the better of the mall, unfortunately. I think there are a lot of things that happened.”
Shifting shopping habits, the COVID-19 pandemic and outdated infrastructure combined to create a perfect storm, pushing malls in Maine and around the country out of consumer conscience.
These consumer changes are easy to see. As fewer people visit the mall, more opt to shop online or in local, small retailers like those located in Downtown Bangor.
Following where the shoppers are is crucial for the city, says Krieg.
“There’s a market for people that want to be downtown,” Krieg describes. “Working on the Village Partnership project with DOT for our downtown to redo that whole streetscape. Working with the Downtown Bangor partnership, we’ve been able to really do as much as we can to support that experience of shopping downtown.”
Between current owners discussing repurposing the property for housing or multi-use and legislators vying for the city to take ownership, the mall’s future is unclear. It’s legacy left on the city, however, is immortalized.
One majorly visible way is the transition of Stillwater Ave. from cow field to crowded main road.
“Places like Home Depot and the car dealerships, I mean, they want to be where people are. So, if people are going to an area to go to the mall, they’re seeing those traffic numbers, they’re seeing the investments the city made into improving Stillwater and improving the intersection with 95, they’re going to want to locate there, too,” Krieg explains.
She goes onto say that despite Bangor Mall seeing lowered attendance, the businesses and shopping plazas that share Stillwater still get frequent visitors.
Beyond the economic and industrial impacts made, the Bangor Mall played a role in shaping the culture of Bangor and, as Shaw says, “put it on the map.”
“It made it more of a city, and it made it more spread out,” Shaw describes of the mall’s influence on Bangor. “It showed people that with the right planning, a cow field could become cosmopolitan.”
Currently, we are waiting to hear the judge’s ruling regarding the City of Bangor’s lawsuit against Bangor Mall owners Namdar Realty Group.
Sen. Joe Baldacci’s bill urging for the mall to be put under eminent domain heard public comment Tuesday.
As Bangor Mall’s next evolution is debated in court and at the State House, what’s in store is anyone’s guess.
But, maybe the Bangor Mall isn’t about the profits turned or potholes filled, but the friends, memories and community we created along the way.
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