VAN BUREN, Maine — In a continuation of the town’s work with Drexel University, Van Buren is working with students on plans to renovate the town’s former municipal building and transition it into a community and business incubator space.
The town began its work with Drexel about a year ago when it started working with the college on a 10-week project that involved making about a dozen art pieces for the town’s historical pathway. This project, according to Town Manager Luke Dyer, would have cost the town around $60,000 if they had not pursued this collaboration.
This collaboration led the town to continue its work with university students. Later last year, Van Buren worked with Clemson University on the creation of a brochure that would highlight the town’s lower than average electricity rates to potential business and residents. This is part of the town’s rebranding efforts, and will be the first time the town has created a new marketing brochure since the 1970s.
These collaborations came about as a response to Van Buren being selected in 2023 as one of just 17 communities in the country to receive a Citizens Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) grant. The grant does not have a dollar value, but provides rural communities with connections that help with revitalization efforts. The CIRD program is an initiative of the National Endowment of the Arts. Shortly after Van Buren received the grant, Drexel professor Scott Schmidt learned about the community and offered to collaborate.
Now, the town is continuing its collaboration with Drexel through a project that will renovate its former municipal building, located on Main Street near the Fire Department.
Town Secretary Paul Nadeau discussed the preliminary designs and ideas for the project during an April 2 Town Council meeting. He said students presented 10 different visions for the building, and how it could be renovated. He said these designs were reviewed by two professional architects.
And while the students have not been to Van Buren, Nadeau said that Dyer provided blueprints of the building from 1941.
“It’s totally amazing what these people came up with for just photographs, without physically visiting the building,” Nadeau said.
The designs featured public meeting rooms, movable kiosks, a community kitchen area, and spaces for small businesses. Nadeau said one concept included a long wall that could feature art related to the town’s Canadian heritage.
Dyer said that the instructor is currently in Europe, and when she returns he will get copies of all the designs and display them in the town council chambers.
The design work alone provided by grad students at Drexel would have cost the town between $75,000 and $100,000.
Dyer said the town is planning to apply for roughly $2.2 million in federal funding to help renovate the space into not just a farmers’ market, but a community market, or a maker’s market, for small businesses.
He said this will help small business owners with a space to sell their products without having to purchase their own building and renovate it for their business.
“The goal of the maker’s market would be to have 10 incubator spaces in the old municipal building,” he said, adding that this space includes the front of that building and the old light and power building.
Businesses would pay a fee to be located at the market, and this fee would just offset the cost of utilities so that there is no burden on local taxpayers.
Dyer said there are people in the community who want to start their own business, but they don’t have the money to purchase an entire building.
“We have some vacant buildings that are for sale, but if you’re a young entrepreneur you just don’t have the money to start that way,” he said. “So we want to help them get started in an incubator space.”
The space will also include a connectivity hub that offers classes about how to get a business started. It would also include a space for community meetings. As it stands, the town’s only municipally owned meeting space is in the town office. This would not only allow the town to host its town meetings in a town-owned space, but also provide a spot for local clubs and organizations to host meetings.
“That’s how we build community here,” Dyer said. “That’s how we’re going to develop our town back to what it used to be, by creating spaces like that.”
