Grant would help sales in improved downtown

ORONO — The home of the University of Maine has applied for a $265,400 Community Development Block Grant that would be used to improve the economic outlook for its downtown shopping district.

The grant would help the town of Orono address safety problems for pedestrian, bicycle and vehicular traffic, and put its downtown merchants in a better position to compete with outlying communities for shopping dollars.

In addition to the town’s residents, Orono plans to maximize the benefits of its built-in market of nearly 10,000 college students and 2,250 faculty and staff members.

Some of the primary reasons Orono wants to strengthen its downtown shopping district are its relatively small industrial base — and the fact that 48 percent of the community’s tax base is tax-exempt.

According to Orono’s grant application, an estimated 20,000 cars a day travel on its Main Street, a section of Route 2 which in effect splits its central business district. Downtown Orono also has high levels of foot and bike traffic due to the university’s presence.

The combination of vehicle, pedestrian and bike traffic “creates a dangerous situation” and town officials hope to address the safety problem by adding sidewalks and establishing clearly designated pedestrian walkways across Main Street and the streets that intersect it.

The downtown parking crunch has been a problem here for years. The town already has taken steps to resolve it by adopting a new parking management program.

The CDBG would help shore up the effort by enabling the town to add parking spaces to the lot behind the public safety facility, expanding and improving its Bennoch Road parking area, and redesigning and rebuilding a parking area on Pine Street.

Work to help Orono capture a bigger share of the region’s shopping dollars would involve establishing a facade program and a marketing strategy.

The facade program would provide storeowners up to $3,000 or 40 percent, whichever is less, toward historically accurate exterior improvements. The aim is to present shoppers with a unified appearance, and to tackle those buildings which have been “modernized” to detrimental aesthetic effect.

The marketing plan calls for developing a more welcoming system of signs to make the business district more user-friendly for motorists and shoppers.

Also in the works is a welcome package in cooperation with the adjacent city of Old Town. The packages would be handed out this fall to first-year university students.