2 Mainers have dream of a modern village New community planned west of Rockport

ROCKPORT – The odds of a new village springing up in Maine are about as likely as new waterfront property emerging.

Despite such odds, Richard Remsen of Rockport and Richard Aroneau of Camden are betting that state cartographers will have to revise their maps in coming years to mark a new village off Route 17 and Route 90 west of Rockport.

Remsen, a glass artist, and his brother-in-law Aroneau, a retail store owner, readily concede that there has been plenty of development in the state, particularly in the last 20 years. There are houses strewn along secondary roads or clustered in subdivisions on old woodlots or farm fields. And new commercial districts have been spawned by a chain store or strip malls.

But as far as traditional New England villages go – places like Blue Hill, Lincolnville Center, Cherryfield and Cutler – defined by a mix of commercial, residential and public uses – nothing new has come along in more than a century, they argue.

In part, that’s because state and local governments have been using the wrong development model on which to base zoning, they say.

Remsen and Aroneau aim not only to build a new village, but also to point the way toward a new pattern of development.

The State Planning Office is eagerly watching the progress of the proposal, excited at the prospect of having a model of what it considers truly “smart growth.”

The proposal first saw the light of day in 1990, after the men came across the work of nationally renowned planners Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Duany planned and built the town of Seaside in Florida in the late 1980s. The carefully designed “instant community” includes stores, parks, public buildings such as a post office and meeting rooms, as well as houses.

The town was featured – in perhaps less than flattering terms – in the film “The Truman Show.” Remsen and Aroneau traveled to Florida to visit Seaside, and persuaded Duany and Plater-Zyberk to plan Ingraham Corner, following a New England village model. The men say their village will not look like Seaside, but the key principles in place there would hold sway in Ingraham Corner.

One of those principles is that the size of the village, measured from one end to the other, will equal the distance a person can cover while walking for 10 to 15 minutes. Another is that lot sizes will vary to encourage both the grand homes a person sees on West Broadway in Bangor or Chestnut Street in Camden and the small, modest homes that might be found on the outskirts of a town.

Ingraham Corner, planned for 120 acres of family-owned land in West Rockport, just behind Remsen’s studio and home, calls for 180 house lots, a small commercial district, and lots set aside for such possible public buildings as a school, church, nursing care center and meeting hall.

Pedestrians are given priority in Ingraham Corner.

The plan shows every street with sidewalks, and in areas where a trail through the woods is the shortest distance between two places in the village, a pathway is shown. Houses will have to be built to a common lot line, ensuring an orderly look from the street – while also encouraging the existence of neighborly front porches – but a variety of housing styles will be accepted.

About one-third of the 120 acres will be public green space, including a watershed that bisects much of the land.

Remsen and Aroneau were fired up about their proposal as the 1990s dawned, and succeeded in persuading Rockport residents to adopt a traditional village zoning district for the area that includes the Ingraham Corner property. It was an easier sell in Rockport, Remsen noted, where residents understand the village concept because the town contains five historic village centers: the village at the harbor, Glen Cove, West Rockport, Simonton Corner and Rockville.

They also invited residents to a series of planning meetings early on, explaining the concept to several hundred people.

The zoning change was itself monumental, the men say.

“It is the only place in the state of Maine where you can build according to traditional patterns,” Aroneau said in a recent interview.

Inexplicably, and without much challenge, the state adopted a suburban model for zoning 20 years ago, Remsen said. He thinks that using suburban zoning, which calls for houses to be built in clusters away from commercial centers, was a grave mistake for a state in which the beauty of its villages is a selling point to tourists and businesses.

“It was the traditional way of building,” Aroneau said of the village, where housing is close to – but clearly delineated from – commercial areas, and public green spaces were at the center.

The men actually measured the distance from the street to porches of fine older homes in Thomaston and Camden, and studied the details of tree plantings along old streets as they planned Ingraham Corner.

When the economy receded sharply in 1991, and with the housing market taking a heavy hit, Ingraham Corner was shelved.

Buoyed by the recovering economy and an increased demand for housing in the midcoast area, Remsen and Aroneau are ready to unveil Ingraham Corner again.

And even though most of the new houses built in Maine in the past 10 years have been along roads like the one that passes Remsen’s house, the men are confident that there is a market for their village.

Maine can sustain double its current population, the men say, if housing and the commercial services that follow are clustered in villages. But a 20 percent to 30 percent growth in suburban patterns could forever change Maine for the worse, they said.

Mary Ann Hayes of the State Planning Office said she and others at the state level are eager to see the Ingraham Corner project come to fruition, in part because they can use it as a tangible example of an alternative to sprawl.

“The time is ripe now,” Aroneau said of their plan. The men are seeking investors to join the project. They estimate the cost of building infrastructure such as roads, sidewalks, sewer or septic, and public spaces in the millions of dollars.