This week’s question comes just as the holiday shopping season approaches — some might say too early, as Thanksgiving is still weeks away, but commercials on TV and online certainly say differently.
Why is the Bangor Mall where it is?
It’s hard to imagine cows where the Bangor Mall now stands. But less than 50 years ago, that’s essentially all that was there — hundreds of cattle grazing on farms that had been operated by Bangor families for decades, raised for milk that as recently as 1970 was delivered directly to the doorsteps of area residents.
When Interstate 95 between Newport and Bangor opened in 1963, however, the writing was on the wall for the area between Stillwater Avenue and Hogan Road, the latter of which was, up until the 1960s, little more than a dirt road. That stretch of highway cut directly through the Davis family’s dairy farm — and with it came a surge of development in an area that was otherwise rural farmland.
By 1977, the Davis family had sold most of their cattle and moved to a smaller operation on nearby Kittredge Road, to make way for the biggest development Bangor had seen in decades: the Bangor Mall. The mall opened on Oct. 5, 1978, permanently changing the economic landscape of the region.
Why Hogan Road, however, for the location of the mall-area shopping district? Why not some other open tract of land in the Bangor area, like those found farther out on other major roads in Bangor like Broadway or Union Street? Or closer to downtown, like the area along Perry Road?
The answer is, essentially, one of the oldest sayings in real estate: location, location, location. Pennsylvania-based mall developer Kravco was able to acquire the farmland that the mall was built on relatively cheaply — and with only a few landowners to contend with, the deal was easy to get done. The largest piece of land purchased was the 60 acres of the Davis farm, on which the mall itself was built.
There was also little else in that area for the mall to compete with. The only commercial development that had occurred was along Hogan Road, where a handful of businesses including a gas station, the Ninety-Fiver Restaurant, and K-Mart opened in the early 1970s. By contrast, the Airport Mall — the first enclosed shopping mall in Maine — had opened on Union Street in 1970, and Broadway’s shopping center had opened way back in 1961.
Furthermore, the 1970s were the peak era of commercial sprawl nationwide. All over the country, developers bought up what was once productive agricultural land and transformed it into malls, shopping centers and chain restaurants. That’s exactly what happened in Bangor. As in countless other cities across the U.S., such development decimated walkable, locally driven downtowns in favor of national chain stores with huge, convenient parking lots.
Over the next 20 years, development in that area would continue at a rapid pace, with smaller shopping centers, standalone businesses and restaurants quickly built along and between Hogan and Stillwater. That development continues today, even as the mall itself has experienced a major decline in tenants and popularity over the past decade, and has had its tax valuation lowered by the city several times since 2017.
Does anything remain of the farmland that once dominated that area? The short answer is no, not really, though the Bangor City Forest and the preserves held by Bangor Land Trust have kept much of the remaining undeveloped land immediately adjacent to the mall area from being purchased by private developers. That land preservation has also helped protect the watershed of the Penjajawoc Stream, which runs directly through the mall area, from further environmental degradation.
The city has recently broadened the approach to what the area along Stillwater and Hogan Road can be used for, rezoning much of it to allow for light industrial uses like warehouses and laboratories. But regardless of what businesses are in those buildings, there’s no going back to the way it was before — for better or worse.