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, the largest community, expanded by a mere 26 souls.

Holding a job in and near Belfast and living farther from the city limits has become the norm.

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

Waldo County was home to 33,018 people in 1990, and hosts a population of 36,280 today, a 10 percent increase that well exceeds most of Maine’s.

The county was the fourth-fastest-growing in the state. Yet the growth appears to be at a pace that makes it easy to manage, according to veteran planner Wayne Marshall.

“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.”

Belfast officials attribute their population stagnation mainly to gentrification and an aging population.

Gentrification – fixing up or converting aging or deteriorated buildings – often results 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 recently. “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 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 con solidated school.

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

Despite 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. During that period, it 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. But “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.