By Rebecca Goldfine,Staff Writer

NORWAY – In a way, the kiosk building on Main Street symbolizes what afflicts the downtown: It has potential and purpose but is underutilized.

As part of a two-year-old downtown revitalization plan, the pitched-roof station was built to contain fliers about local businesses and attractions and be a bus stop. Yet, a sturdy Plexiglas pamphlet container holds not one piece of paper.

Selectman Russell Newcomb said at a recent board meeting, “I’ve had many people ask me, What is that building?”

“I know that things change downtown,” Town Manager David Holt said. “Good things happen and disappointment happens. I think both have happened since we came up with the plan, but sometimes in the course of life you get focused on other things. I think that’s what happened here.”

There is one small improvement in the works. On one wall hangs artist Nikki Millonzi’s watercolor reproduction of the town. Debbie Wyman, Norway’s director of community development, said Grassroots Graphics is working on creating a key for it that would mark businesses with numbers so visitors can quickly locate shops and services.

“I’d like to see it filled right up with things like the watercolor map,” Wyman said of the booth.

She also said she wants to build benches in the small shelter, in the hope one day that buses will make their way down a bustling Main Street. Or better yet, a trolley.

“In a perfect world, we would have a trolley that would take people from one end of the street to the other,” she said.

Town officials say they welcome creative ideas for the mostly empty kiosk.