Census finds population growing in Waldo County Belfast numbers flat; Lincolnville, Winterport expand

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BELFAST – Nowhere is the fruit of Waldo County’s expanding population more evident than in the growing number of businesses thriving in the environs of its historic county seat.

Yet, in a decade in which the county as a whole increased its population by 10 percent, Belfast expanded by a mere 26 souls.

Instead, jobs in and near Belfast and housing farther from the city limits have become the norm.

The opposite holds true in three other Waldo County corners, Lincolnville, Palermo and Winterport, where more people are living but working somewhere else.

“This really isn’t a fast-growth county, not even in Maine terms,” said veteran planner Wayne Marshall. “It certainly hasn’t reached the point where you stand up and say things have gotten completely out of hand.”

According to U.S. Census Bureau figures, the population of Belfast has remained virtually stagnant for the past decade.

Waldo County was home to 33,018 people in 1990 and hosts a population of 36,280 today.

In Belfast, which recorded 6,355 residents a decade ago, the net gain in population by 2000 was 26, for a total count of 6,381.

City officials attribute the population stagnation to a number of reasons, the primary ones being gentrification and an increasingly aging population.

Gentrification describes fixing up or converting aging or deteriorated buildings, often resulting in higher property values and displacement of the poor.

“Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen a dramatic shift from multifamily apartment buildings being converted back to single-family dwellings,” Belfast Mayor Michael Hurley said this week. “Rents have gone up and families have moved out. When you see 50 buildings that used to have more apartments turned into single- or two-family, then it stands to reason that you’d have less people.”

A person need only walk down one of the city’s tree-lined streets with their large, single-family homes to see what’s going on. During the day, streets are quiet, devoid of children playing. In the evening, many homes are either dark, or perhaps a solitary light flickers from a single window. While the business district brims with activity, the in-town neighborhoods are wrapped in an eerie calm.

The census numbers accentuate the findings of the SAD 34 administration about Belfast’s population. The school department has been saying for years that the number of school-age children living in the city was in decline. At the same time, population levels in district towns outside Belfast have been on the upswing.

“It has confirmed the declining enrollment in Belfast the last several years,” said Paul Luttrell, SAD 34 assistant superintendent.

With those findings in mind, he added, SAD 34 directors have decided to renovate the two in-town elementary schools in Belfast rather than build a consolidated school.

“This will help support the board’s argument that these schools need to be upgraded,” said Luttrell of the figures.

Even with Belfast’s slow growth, the population for the entire six-community SAD 34 has increased by 7.5 percent. From 10,920 residents in 1990, the district picked up another 888 over the ensuing decade, bringing the total population to 11,808. During that period, the district has adjusted to the growth by building additions to all of its small-town schools.

Belfast’s flat population numbers belie its strong commercial growth.

Marshall, the Belfast city planner, said the city has averaged 50,000 square feet annually in new retail or commercial space over the past decade. The city may have added nearly 400 housing units during the same period, but that was not enough to fuel a population boom.

And then there is MBNA.

The credit card lender has spurred much of Belfast’s growth in commercial activity and the county’s growth in population. The credit card giant set down Waldo County roots in 1996 and has added more than 400,000 square feet in office space and brought 3,000 jobs to the city.

The company is credited with boosting population in the towns surrounding Belfast. In fact, MBNA employees have had so much difficulty finding a place to live in the city that the company is building its own 46-unit apartment complex a short distance from its office complex. The company also has plans for additional housing projects.

David Spartin, MBNA vice president, said about 1,200 of the company’s Waldo County employees live in Waldo County.

Marshall confirmed that many nearby towns have experienced significant population growth because of the jobs created in Belfast. “Clearly job creation has outpaced population growth by a significant factor, especially in Belfast. Our population growth does not seem to be keeping pace with that job growth,” he said.

Marshall noted that a decade ago Waldo County had an unemployment rate approaching double figures. Today it hovers around 2.5 percent, a situation undreamed of in 1990.

All of Waldo County appears to have benefited from the boom in jobs, Marshall said.

That, along with the county’s rural nature, coastal habitat and proximity to urban centers such as Bangor, Augusta and Waterville, has allowed for steady, if not dramatic growth. In fact, communities within commuting distance from those cities have experienced some of the county’s highest growth numbers.

Winterport, the county’s second-largest community, picked up 427 residents over the past decade, bringing its population to 3,602. Town Manager Leo LaChance noted that the center of town was about “10 miles to Paul Bunyan,” referring to the Bangor statue, and that the community’s distance from Bangor and Belfast helps make it desirable.

“What I’ve seen in my four years here indicates two things are drawing people to Winterport. One is it’s really a nice place, and the other is that we have a minimum of red tape in order to put in new buildings and a ready source of buildable land,” LaChance said. “We have a small-town atmosphere, and the proximity to Bangor is a contributing factor. We also have a number of people going into Belfast and MBNA.”

Palermo, on the Kennebec County line and a 20-minute commute to Augusta, experienced a 16 percent population increase by adding 199 residents. The town now has a population of 1,220.

Municipalities situated a relatively short drive from Belfast or the Camden-Rockland market also saw strong growth numbers. Searsmont, whose population of 938 grew by 238, to 1,174, recorded a growth rate of 20 percent. Lincolnville picked up 233 residents over the past decade, an 11 percent jump, bringing its population to 2,042. Belmont added 169 residents, an increase of 21 percent.

Other towns on the county line that recorded growth numbers of better than 10 percent were Burnham, Prospect and Troy.

Yet towns in the center of the county such as Brooks, Montville, Liberty, Jackson, Freedom, Monroe, Knox and Waldo also increased their populations. All are in SAD 3, an 11-community school district that experienced a 10.2 percent gain in population. SAD 3 now has a population of 10,028, nearly one-third of the county’s total.

The figures indicate the opposite in SAD 56, which has experienced only a 3 percent increase in overall population. The largest town in the district, Searsport, gained just 38 residents over the decade. Frankfort gained 21, and Stockton Springs gained 98. The total population for the district went from 5,006 in 1990 to 5,163 in 2000.

Waldo County is the fourth-fastest-growing county in the state. Yet the growth appears to be at a pace that makes it easy to manage, according to Marshall, who noted that it takes just three or four families a year for a town to increase its population by 100 residents over a decade.

“A 10 percent rate of growth over 10 years isn’t an astronomical rate of growth,” Marshall said. “Even though the numbers look large, it isn’t such a high rate of growth that people feel apprehensive.”