Biddeford Today

Biddeford is Maine’s sixth largest city, with a year-round population of over 22,000, but its story is really a tale of three cities: the mostly aging, largely Franco-American community that once labored in the mills stands in stark contrast to the University of New England campus four miles to the east and to Biddeford Pool, Hills Beach, Fortunes Rocks, and Granite Point with their wealthy summer enclaves on the Atlantic shore.

Biddeford has turned to economic and cultural redevelopment to unite these groups and reverse the City’s decline. The City holds a monthly Art Walk and an annual “Chalk on the Walk” street painting festival, the City’s Victorian-era theater has been refurbished and actively used and the Biddeford Historical Society produced a Museum in the Streets—a walking tour with panels of photographs and historical interpretation—all of which celebrate Biddeford’s rich industrial history while helping residents envision a promising future.

One of nine Main Street Maine Communities (part of the National Main Street program), Biddeford has benefited from $975,000 in new public and private downtown investments since 2006. Main Street’s economy is growing for the first time in 100 years and more than one million square feet of mill space is slated for redevelopment, with artisan furniture and woodworking companies, artists’ and musicians’ studios, housing and restaurants already occupying the refurbished space.

Still, the City struggles to shed its past image without becoming gentrified or marginalizing the current residents who call Biddeford home. As of the 2000 census, only 50 percent of Biddeford residents owned homes (well below the national average) and nearly 14 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. As a federal HUD Entitlement Community, Biddeford is eligible for major community development and neighborhood revitalization grants to reduce blight and improve living conditions; the challenge will be to make those changes without displacing the traditional core of the community.

• « first
• ‹ previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• next ›
• last »