LIMESTONE, Maine — Many Aroostook County downtowns took a heavy blow when Loring Air Force Base closed 30 years ago, but none more so than Limestone.
Today, traditional storefronts on Limestone’s Main Street have shrunk along with the town’s population. At its peak in 1960, 13,000 people lived in Limestone, but that number had already dropped to 10,000 by 1990. In 2020, it was down to 1,526.
That decline has continued even as Loring Commerce Center, which replaced the Air Force base, looks to bring back jobs with an anticipated potato chip factory, sustainable aviation fuel facility and other aerospace ventures.
With redevelopment of the base finally looking possible, the conversation in town has turned toward keeping storefronts on Main Street amidst a rise in home-based and online businesses. The current look of Limestone’s downtown likely reflects that post-COVID trend.
“I think it happened before, but the pandemic made us realize that you don’t have to be at an office or have a storefront to run a business,” said Jo-Ellen Kelley, vice president of the Limestone Chamber of Commerce.
Turning right onto Main Street from Access Highway, visitors will come across Mike’s Family Market on the corner, with Talk of the Town, a hair salon, directly across the street. They’ll then see Boulevard Graphix, a custom design shop, several buildings away from the salon.
If they keep driving uphill, folks will see White As Snow Laundromat, Eagles Redemption Center and Limestone Pack & Ship, a trio of businesses owned by Julie and Brian Weston at 30 Main, and then the post office and bank ATM across the street. The small downtown ends roughly near the Town Office and school.
Several vacant storefronts still sit there, including two that formerly housed Norstar Appliance. The used home appliance store relocated to a larger Caribou storefront earlier this month.
Back in 2021, Norstar started off at 14 Main St., before going to a bigger space next door to the Westons’ building at 34 Main. The latter building briefly housed Main Street Outlet, a department store, in 2021. Mike and Pat Cyr own 34 Main and have put the building on the market for $119,000 since the departure of Norstar.
“Hopefully, another business will come in,” Mike Cyr said. “We’d like to see more businesses on Main Street.”
The Cyrs, who live in Caribou, have owned and operated Mike’s Family Market for 14 years at a spot that has long housed a corner grocery store. As one of the only locally owned retail businesses in town, Mike’s continues to draw in those who often find themselves traveling to other towns for necessities.
“We do all our groceries here, and we like Dollar General, but we get all our home building supplies in Caribou,” Limestone resident Joanne Huntress said on a short trip to the post office Tuesday afternoon.
With school in session and parents at work, it’s common to find mostly older people like Huntress running errands where they could. But Limestone’s population decline has made it harder to keep essential services and local favorites in town.
In 2017, Limestone was one of three branch locations, along with Easton and Washburn, that Katahdin Trust Co. closed in Aroostook, citing decreased foot traffic and an uptick in online banking.
Many of Main Street’s restaurants have come and gone since Loring’s closure in 1994. Carol Kelley, Jo-Ellen Kelley’s mother-in-law, was able to sustain Kelley’s Restaurant at 20 Main until selling it in the mid-2000s. Carl and Mary Morin took over until selling in 2009 to Jaime and Michelle Albert, who renamed it Al-Bear’s Pizza.
That closed in late 2017. The space briefly became Double Play, another family-owned pizza place, and then B-52 Pizza and Subs in 2021. But B-52 closed just over a year later and its vacancy prompted Boulevard Graphix to expand there.
Down the road at 30 Main, the Westons said that all three of their businesses are going strong because they provide essential services for residents. But they’re also amazed at how many businesses have left Main Street since they arrived in 2015.
“Storefronts keep people in town, but you need to have the population,” Weston said.
If Limestone is going to have a future alongside a new Loring, the answer might be to encourage all business growth even outside the typical storefronts, Kelley said. The local chamber of commerce has 65 members, 40 of whom are based in Limestone or surrounding towns like Caswell, Caribou and Fort Fairfield.
A growing number of those members are people who use their home as their main business location but frequently travel to meet with clients, Kelley noted, and many are located on or just off Main Street.
Limestone is the only chamber of commerce in Aroostook that has not merged with a larger organization like the Central Aroostook chamber. The tighter focus has given volunteers more time to welcome new residents, plan community events, lead town beautification projects, meet with business owners and promote them on social media and in an online directory.
“There are a lot of entrepreneurs who do many things, and those many things keep our town thriving. There’s probably not a lot of money in any one thing, but they make a town viable,” Kelley said. “We just need the infrastructure downtown for something like the food industry to move in.”
