Downtown

Lewiston

gets boost
By Scott Taylor
Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Andover College, the Portland-based business school, will make downtown Lewiston home to its second campus next spring, school and city officials announced Monday.

The school will take over the former Good Shepherd Food-Bank warehouse on Lisbon Street, next to the Oxford Networks building that’s under construction.

Andover College President Steven K. Ingram said the school began looking to expand in the area last summer after Auburn’s Mid-State College closed its doors.

“We have about 60 Mid-State students enrolled right now,” Ingram said. “So we asked ourselves, did we want to have those 60 students drive to Portland or did we want to come to those students?”

The school signed a 10-year lease with the Franklin Property Trust, which owns the one-story warehouse building. According to the lease agreement, the school will take over the 13,000-square-foot building and will spend more than $500,000 in renovations.

The school’s entire curriculum will be offered at the Lewiston campus when it opens in March 2004. The college should have 12 classrooms as well as state-of-the-art laboratory and computer equipment.

Andover expects to eventually enroll 500 students at the Lewiston campus, said Brenda Berry, director of student services for the college and a member of the board of directors.

Enrollment is already open for the spring 2004 semester, she said.

Andover College began in 1967 as the Andover Institute of Business with 40 students. It began offering associate-degree courses in 1976.

The school has about 500 students enrolled at its Washington Street campus in Portland. It offers classes in criminal justice, business administration, travel and tourism and medical assistance, among other things.

Gateway renewal

The project is part of the city’s effort to clean up the city’s southern gateway, the portion of Lisbon Street north of Maple Street. City and business leaders unveiled their plan to revamp the gateway in May.

“No community in Maine is changing faster than this one is in terms of perception and true economic development,” City Administrator Jim Bennett said. “This announcement is a part of that.”

The city and developer Stanley Sklar of the Franklin Property Trust and businesses Oxford Networks and Northeast Bank are redeveloping the block of buildings surrounded by Lisbon, Maple and Canal streets. Plans call for three new office buildings, new sidewalks, buried utilities and a parking garage on the block.

The buildings on either side of the food bank warehouse were torn down last summer and work has started on the Oxford Networks office building. Oxford Networks also built a switching station for a fiber-optic cable network just north of the site and installed a 28-foot-wide satellite dish on top of the Pontiac Building.

Mayor Larry Raymond pointed out that the gateway project was announced only five months ago. “And since then buildings have come down, new buildings are going up and a fiber-optic network and hub have been built.

“Four months from today, 13,000 square feet of old warehouse space will be redeveloped into a first-class educational space,” he said.

staylor@sunjournal.com

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