Main Street in Milbridge ?on the upswing?

MILBRIDGE ? Good things are happening along U.S. Route 1. The road, which follows the curve of the Narraguagus Bay, is the heart of the western Washington County business community.

The last six months have been nothing short of transitional for businesses on Main Street. A grocery that had been family-owned for the last 50 years closed in October, and a seafood market moved into that vacant space.

A second-hand clothing store has taken over the seafood market’s previous space, run by a fresh-eyed, first-time business owner.

A new restaurant opened in December, replacing a blighted building that had stood empty for five years. And the family that lost its store and other businesses to fire in March 2003 is preparing to open a small lunch counter on the same Main Street property by next weekend.

Just in time for the hoped-for influx of tourists, the merchants of Main Street are looking good.

“I really feel we are on the upswing,” said Elaine Mathiason, president of the reemerging Milbridge Area Merchants Association.

“We want people to start thinking of Milbridge again as a place to shop and eat and go to the movies. Of course, we could use a gift shop, antiques store and gallery here, so we can keep the tourists in town longer.

“But we have come through the winter, which was horrible for everyone, and honestly, we had quite a lousy tourist season last year.”

Mathiason, who has been part of the Red Barn Restaurant and Motel for more than 20 years, is working with her Main Street colleagues to perk up tourism and business in town. The association rose up five months ago after the previous chamber of commerce that served western Washington County’s towns folded last year.

Clyde Belanger, the pharmacist for the independent Milbridge Pharmacy, believes Main Street is “holding its own.”

“Main Street has its ebbs and tides,” he said Wednesday. “Most of the storefronts are full now. There have been times when they haven’t been.”

The Bargain Boutique, Tracy McKenna’s new shop for second-hand clothing, opened in March in the space formerly occupied by Tibbetts Seafood Market. Six weeks later, she knows she discovered a soft spot downtown.

“I love shopping at places like this myself, and we have nothing in Milbridge like this,” McKenna said. “We have been extremely busy. The word has spread.”

Next door at 17 Main St. is the new restaurant and bar, 44 Degrees North. Its owners are Milbridge native Charles Rossi and his wife Jan.

The restaurant uses a lighthouse motif on its tablecloths and menus. Open daily for lunch and dinner, Jan Rossi employs 16 people and also does some of the cooking. She buys lobsters locally and buys crabmeat from someone who does that work from home.

“We’ve got all we can handle for business,” she said.

Next to open on Main Street will be the In Town Cafe, which has been converted from a former carwash. When the Milbridge Market burned in March 2003, Veronica and Richard Reed also lost the car wash in the back of their property, a laundromat, a liquor outlet, a lunch counter and a convenience store.

The cafe will be the family’s start back two years after the fire. A full-service kitchen will provide breakfast, pizzas and fried food. The cafe will expand to more, if business is good.

Tibbetts Seafood, just three years on Main Street itself, moved in February to the now-closed Millett Bros. Grocery site just for the bigger space for customers. The shop, which buys its halibut, clams, crabmeat and smelts locally, sells an array of the daily catch, with lobsters and clams the biggest sellers in summer, and haddock and crabmeat popular the rest of the year.