Sears looking to open store in Lincoln

LINCOLN – Wanted: a landlord with a building big enough and a manager with acumen great enough to operate a 4,000- to 10,000-square-foot Sears retail dealer store in town.

Town officials were starting to look Friday for someone to run such a store for Sears, whose district managers are looking for a site in Lincoln.

“Sears is offering to set up the applicant with inventory and managerial [guidance], if we can match a building and potential landlord and store manager to them,” Ruth Birtz, the town’s economic development assistant and code enforcement supervisor, said Friday.

Sears, which has 10 dealer stores and five larger, or full-line stores, in Maine, has had its eye on Lincoln as a location for years, said Arthur Burke, Sears’ market development manager for New England, New York (except Long Island) and northern Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey.

“We used to have a dealer store there in the early 1990s,” Burke said during a telephone interview Friday from his office in Londonderry, N.H.

A dealer store typically sells appliances, electronics, lawn and garden equipment and tools to rural communities. Sears has 800 nationwide and 10 in Maine, according to Burke. The Maine stores are located in Belfast, Biddeford, Ellsworth, Farmington, Fort Kent, Houlton, Machias, Newport, North Windham and Waterville.

Sears hopes to open the Lincoln store in November, if all goes well, he said.

Sears market developers considered placing a store in the Katahdin region, and received a call from Maryland developer and environmental lawyer Gary Silversmith, Burke said. Silversmith recently bought the former Ames Plaza on Route 157 in Millinocket for an undisclosed amount.

Yet market studies examining household counts, market growth, the area’s average age and median income showed that Lincoln is a good location for a dealer store, Burke said.

A service hub for the Lincoln Lakes region, Lincoln has a population of about 5,200, a paper mill employing about 400 workers, a hospital, a downtown retail area and a lively housing and retail sales market.

Lincoln is also about 50 miles from Bangor, which is undergoing a retail and construction boom and is part of the steady south-to-north population growth occurring along the Interstate 95 corridor.

Although Millinocket and the Katahdin region match Lincoln in most ways, the area is 60 to 71 miles from Bangor, has an older, less moneyed population and doesn’t benefit from proximity to the Bangor-Old Town region like the Lincoln Lakes’ region does, Burke said.

“There may not be enough volume for an owner to make a living in Millinocket,” he said.

Still, Burke would not rule out Millinocket or the Katahdin region as a good location for such a store, if the Lincoln store is successful.

“The real estate would be available at the right price,” he said. “If we could find real estate real inexpensive, then a dealer could go in there with a [family business], hire one or two associates and maybe scratch out a living.”