Couple take on million-dollar retirement project to boost downtown Oakland

OAKLAND — A longtime Oakland couple have undertaken a million-dollar retirement project to redevelop a downtown building in an effort to breathe economic life into the area.

Don and Jean Ponitz spent about $400,000 in 2021 to buy adjacent buildings on Main Street. One houses Blake Family Hardware and is meant as a long-term investment for the couple. But their primary focus now is redeveloping the second structure, known as the 1902 Bank Block building, a reference to the bank it housed many decades ago.

The couple over the past 18 months have gutted and cleaned out the three-story Bank Block, replacing the utilities and preparing about 3,000 square feet on the ground floor for retail use. Their intention with the upper two floors is to offer apartments for rent.

“We’ve been in town for a long time, and we just love the community,” said Don Ponitz, who is 82. “We really want to make something that’s gonna create traffic in town. We just want Oakland to be really nice, and be active.”

The broader aim is to reinvigorate a downtown that Don and Jean Ponitz and town officials say has never really been the vibrant community core residents want it to be. A variety of businesses, including a restaurant, furniture store, barbershop, jeweler and clothing store, have opened in the Bank Block and then shuttered.

“Our Main Street has been failing,” Town Manager Ella Bowman said Thursday. “Once you have a vacant storefront, it’s almost like a disease. It spreads through the downtown because you have less and less people coming to town. It just looks awful.”

Geoff Ponitz paints where a second-floor apartment is being built in the Bank Block building in downtown Oakland on Wednesday. His parents, Don and Jean Ponitz, purchased the building two years ago in an effort to renovate it and lure a restaurant and retailers downtown. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

Bowman said the Bank Block building also has been home to an illegal marijuana operation and vagrants over the past few years, so when the Ponitzes expressed interest in buying and redeveloping the property, officials were pleased and decided to move forward with creating a downtown tax increment financing district — a TIF — to help attract businesses.

“If we have a family willing to invest their own money, why wouldn’t the town be willing to invest to help this move along?” Bowman said. “I’ve got so much faith in Don Ponitz. He’s going to push this thing across the finish line. Just by taking the storefronts downstairs and replacing those and bringing it up to modern times is going to be such an attractive picture for people.”

The Ponitzes said Wednesday they are not developers, just residents invested in bettering their community. They moved to Oakland from Boston about 50 years ago. They raised two boys while Don Ponitz worked as a dentist and Jean Ponitz as a dental anesthetist.

While the couple do not want to lose money on the project, which Don Ponitz estimates will cost about $1 million, they said they are not looking to get rich off the property.

In addition to the empty retail space, the couple said the building includes a large green space in back and a basement that a business could also use. A restaurant could introduce outdoor dining, they said, and use the basement as a wine cellar.

“There’s so much potential here,” Jean Ponitz, 80, said. “It’s waiting. It’s just ready.”

So far, the only business that has expressed interest was a medical office, but Don Ponitz said the couple turned it down because they felt it would not help achieve their aim of bringing more traffic downtown.

“People want a restaurant,” said Jean Ponitz, who added that people are excited about the prospect of family dining or shopping downtown.

While no restaurateur or retailer has yet to express interest in leasing space, the rehab work will conclude in the coming weeks and the couple are hopeful inquiries will begin coming in once they turn their attention to advertising.

Oakland has emerged in recent years as a wonderful place to live, Don Ponitz said. With a strong school district, a tax rate that is comparatively low and the nearby Belgrade Lakes, the only missing piece is a vibrant downtown where families can eat, drink and shop, he said.

There are no local restaurants that serve dinner in town, and only one that offers lunch, Jean Ponitz said.

While much attention in recent years has gone to Waterville and its resurgent downtown, Bowman said it is important Oakland residents have enticements to spend money in their own community.

“It creates a sense of place for the people who live here,” Bowman said. “Oakland’s downtown is a gift, and it’s a gift that we need to go and take care of. The Ponitzes realize that. It takes a very special family to step up and do (what) they are, not for their own personal benefit, but for the benefit of the community.”