ANTHONY GATTI, managing partner at Waterfront Maine, addresses members of the Brunswick Downtown Association during a tour of businesses at Fort Andross.
The Brunswick Downtown
Association, conducting a tour of businesses that call Fort Andross home, celebrated 30 years of renovations to the former Cabot Mill that had sat in decay from the mid 1950s until 1986.
Anthony Gatti, managing partner at Waterfront Maine, said that when Coley Burke bought the mill in 1986, windows were boarded up and the most prominent tenant in the 100,000-square-foot facility were pigeons.
Just as major renovations began at the mill, the flood of 1987 struck. Gatti said Burke sandbagged the openings along the riverside and had holes drilled in the floor to the basement as flood waters washed over the Frank J. Wood Bridge.
“It’s been a journey of one window, one office and one studio at a time,” Gatti said.
Gatti said Waterfront Maine will be working with The Nature Conservancy on a solar project for the roof of Fort Andross starting in July. The plan involves 160 solar panels on the building’s flat, fourth-story roof.
Gatti said they became their own tenant in the early days, opening Cumberland Self Storage. Later, a flea market, Cabot Mill Antiques and the indoor winter flea market took off. Today, about 350 people work at Fort Andross.
There is no typical business at the mill that used to just churn out textiles.
Restaurants, dentists, artists and the Maine State Music Theatre all call Fort Andross home. Visitors can drink tea, soda and drink mixes manufactured in the old mill, take a martial arts class and record their own music in one visit.
One of the businesses BDA toured was D. Todd and Co., a maker of handcrafted tile where people like Jon Bon Jovi and Paul Simon shop.
Owner Deborah Todd and her mother make all the tiles by hand to customer specifications and, although they only source their materials in the U.S., their work has been installed worldwide including
Japan, Israel and France.
Another tenant is sculptor and Bowdoin professor John Bisbee, who works a small forge, pounding nails and spikes into stunning works of art. One of the first tenants of the revived Fort Andross, Bisbee still pounds away at his craft, now with two assistants.
East Point Conservation Studio works to preserve furniture, according to owner Jon Brandon. Brandon showed the BDA a grandfather clock from the 1700s he had been restoring. The clock was damaged in Hurricane Grace in 1991 when water crashed through a seaside Kennebunk home and sat in the water until its owners recovered it.
dmcintire@timesrecord.com
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