Robert Klose lives and writes in Orono. His latest novel, “Trigger Warning,” was a finalist in the American Fiction Awards.
In reporting on the Bangor Mall, it seems obligatory for journalists to note that the site was once a cow pasture, as if the idea of undeveloped land were an abomination. Is it not ironic that the mall, once hailed as a shopper’s paradise, has itself become an abomination?
Let me count the ways: The crumbling parking lot; the leaky roof; vacant storefronts; vestigial food court; a ruptured sewer pipe. Something once hailed as a triumph of central Maine mercantilism has become a retail slum.
Over the years, criticisms of the mall as something that contributed to the decline of Bangor’s downtown were often met with the response that the mall was the new downtown. This, of course, is nonsense, and reveals a basic ignorance of what constitutes a real town center.
First off, downtowns are public places, and as such, they are democratic places: Everyone has a right to be there. A mall, by contrast, is a private space, owned and (sometimes) maintained by investors. If one has any doubt about this, here’s an experiment: Conduct a political protest in a downtown. Then try to conduct the same protest in the privately owned mall. Good luck.
A real downtown is a commons, a gathering place that offers more than an opportunity to buy stuff. It has architectural interest, places to repose and infinite opportunities for people watching: the old and the young and the in-between, from the well-heeled to those for whom life has gone hard. The message of the downtown is that we are all in this together.
As for the mall, it is an architectural study in sterility. When it is well-groomed, it is bright and shiny, but it is monotonous, its entire story revealed at a glance. A real downtown has an accumulated history, with stories lingering in the shadows. It is a conglomeration of the ideas of many; but a mall is the vision of one or a few, constructed in a fell swoop. Hence the homogeneity, the flatness.
Even in its so-called heyday, I rarely visited the Bangor Mall (usually under duress from my children). From the moment I stepped inside, I was put off by music chosen for me by somebody else, the circular wandering of the patrons like pollock in a weir, and, most significantly, the realization that most of its stores belonged to national chains. The employees within really didn’t care whether I bought something or not, because they weren’t the owners. It’s reasonable to assume they didn’t even know the owners.
In a real downtown, by contrast, the owners are people who live in or near my community. They often work on the premises of their businesses. Their children might go to school with mine. Patronizing their establishments is an investment in social capital. A dollar spent in a local downtown shop will more than likely continue to circulate in the community. In short, shopping in a real downtown is the promotion of a relationship. It’s hard to put a price on this.
And now the mall is dying, and it’s an ugly death. The news reporting says that the city of Bangor has reached out to the owners to address the myriad code violations, but as of this writing the owners have not responded. And so the city has filed suit to get them to take responsibility for their property.
But I understand their reluctance. They don’t live in Maine. It’s possible that they’ve never been to Maine, or walked under the leaky roof of their mall. It’s possible that they’re so wealthy that the mall is simply a line item on a balance sheet, a loss they can afford to absorb.
So what is to become of the Bangor Mall property? I’ve long thought that it would make a fine cow pasture.
