Costco in Scarborough on Jan. 8. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

An indoor skatepark. A conveyer-belt sushi restaurant. Discount apparel. More spicy chicken.

Mainers have a long wish list of businesses they’d like to see come to the Pine Tree State in 2025.

Chase Carroll, 27, wants a Dave’s Hot Chicken. The fried chicken restaurant has more than 100 locations in the United States and abroad, but only a handful in northern New England. Walking out into the Rock Row parking lot last week, he hardly needed a second to think before answering.

“There’s one of them in Portsmouth,” Carroll said. “Every time I go down to Kittery Trading Post, I always cross over into New Hampshire to grab some.”

Carroll makes it to the Californian fast-casual chain once every few months, he said. Occasionally, he makes the trip just for the chicken, usually recruiting a friend or relative to ride along. “It’s a lot of tolls, man,” he said, with a laugh.

Other shoppers suggested a Cheesecake Factory, more large retailers like Walmart and high-end specialty stores like Williams Sonoma, which used to have an outpost at the Maine Mall.

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But despite local enthusiasm, Maine is at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting established businesses, said Grant Miles, associate professor of management at the University of Maine business school. He noted that population numbers are key for retailers calculating potential demand — how many potential customers live close enough to reach the location — and the availability of workers.

And while southern Maine is growing relatively quickly, it is still dwarfed by other parts of the country.

“We’re competing (with other regions) just as companies are competing with each other. And we’re not in as strong a position as we’d like to be for a lot of businesses,” Miles said. “Maine is just not top of their list of places to look.”

Miles suggested that Greater Portland’s growth would likely keep pace with sprawl north of Boston.

But while some industry experts expect Maine’s momentum to carry through this year, they cautioned that it can be difficult to predict exactly what development will bring.

Growth has been particularly strong in the state’s retail sector, said Curtis Picard, president of the Retail Association of Maine.

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“We’ve seen some interesting new companies come to Maine,” Picard said.

He noted the Jordan’s Furniture location that opened in the Maine Mall in 2020 and, more recently, a Costco. Maine was among just a few states without one until the Scarborough location opened in late 2023, he noted (Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wyoming are still without).

“As far as where do trends go, and what do people want? Everybody has an opinion about that,” Picard said. “That’s kind of a harder question to answer.”

ROOM FOR GROWTH

Picard was among a handful of experts who pointed to the Maine Mall as a space to watch in 2025.

The mall has weathered a series of closings over the last few years, including onetime anchors like Sears, but Picard and city officials noted that it seems to be doing better than most malls in the country, many of which are struggling to keep pace with online retail. Only a handful of stalls remain empty, according to the mall’s directory.

Ali Phillips, a spokesperson for the mall’s owner, Brookfield Properties, said the main structure and its outbuildings “are nearly fully leased,” but declined to share specific vacancy numbers, citing company policy.

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Free People Movement, a women’s activewear company, will be setting up shop in the mall, and clothing retailer Carhartt plans to expand its space, Phillips said. She did not provide timelines for either development.

Joshua Reny, South Portland’s assistant city manager, said the mall and surrounding blocks entered 2025 with a lot of momentum in restaurant and lodging.  That area is one of the larger commercial districts in northern New England, he said.

A handful of smaller parcels surrounding the mall are being eyed for development, Reny said, but he declined to get into specifics over what businesses may be coming.

“And then this past year, there was a buyer for the Sears property,” Reny said. “And we’re not at a point yet where we can say anything about that, but that potentially could be exciting for the mall as a whole.”

Property records show Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. purchased the former Sears for $13.4 million in April, but the company has not announced any plans for the property and did not return calls or emailed questions about the site. Phillips, the mall spokesperson, confirmed that Dick’s is “joining our line-up” but said she could not provide a timeline or comment on the company’s specific plans.

Recently, the Pennsylvania retailer has started opening Dick’s House of Sports locations, which are larger than their traditional stores and offer hands-on amenities, including rock climbing walls and golf simulators, and host events and birthday parties.

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Something like that could be good news for Portland resident Jessica Teesdale, 50, who said she wanted to see more “indoor recreation type places” that can offer an escape from the winter weather.

She rattled off a few other wants — more Asian cuisine, late-night haunts with nonalcoholic options — then paused for a moment to think before blurting out “I would love an Ikea!”

The Swedish furniture retailer, known for its warehouse showrooms and meatballs, has long been a wish-list item for Mainers.

But industry experts expressed doubts over whether it would make it to Maine, especially before the year’s end, given the amount of preparation that needs to take place before an opening: location scouting, construction, marketing and training a workforce.

Picard noted that the store requires a large physical footprint, which may not fit well into many landscapes or communities. Large retailers can create additional traffic, and they need a sufficiently large population to serve as a customer base.

“They’re not necessarily, from what I know of them, going to be opening up in every corner of the United States,” Picard said. “While it might be interesting for an Ikea to come to Maine … I can’t imagine that’s even being talked about.”

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Ikea did not respond to a voicemail or emailed questions about what the company considers in potential expansions.

“Every business has its sense of ‘How big an area do we need?'” Miles said. “A McDonald’s only needs so many people. An Ikea needs a whole lot more.”

Miles said tax incentives and improvements to infrastructure like roads and railways can be a compelling factor, but he argued that the state’s remoteness can make it difficult for companies to set up a reliable and financially viable supply chain if they don’t have other locations in Maine.

“If you are talking a national chain, they’re trying to link them together. So one real outlier out there is a lot harder and more expensive for them to service,” he said.

Hirotoshi Takeda, a professor of business analytics at the University of Maine and the University of Southern Maine, added that the state’s workforce is aging and high property values can make it difficult to attract newcomers.

“With Maine, the advantage is the highly educated workforce that we have,” Takeda said. But “It’s hard to recruit or justify workers coming here and actually being able to afford to buy a house.”

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Karen Martin, executive director of the Scarborough Economic Development Corporation, said Ikea never returned a letter she sent them years ago asking: “Have you considered, you know, north of Boston?” She said the idea comes up every few years.

“I don’t see an Ikea in 2025,” Martin said. “If Ikea came knocking on our door, we would certainly do our best to figure out a place. But we really have accommodated a lot of the larger retail now, and I’d like to think the next few years we’re going to shine on smaller, homegrown businesses.”

A MATTER OF SCALE

Martin pointed to the success of smaller and more specialty retailers like Pine Tree Seafood and On the Vine Marketplace, which crossed into Maine around 10 years ago from New Hampshire and fills a different niche than its larger grocery counterparts.

Martin said restaurants tend to stand out when customers consider what they want to see in their neighborhood, but there are a whole range of service-oriented businesses — laundromats, salons — that help support sustainable neighborhood growth, even if they don’t seem as thrilling at first.

Those who move to Maine from away also carry new expectations and hopes for the state’s business landscape, she said.

“Sometimes they may talk about things that we’ve never heard of,” Martin said.

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Rita Fontes, who grew up in Portland and now lives in Kennebunk, spent a few years in Texas, where she became enamored with outdoor shopping complexes.

“They’d have cute, little outside areas that you could just sit, with trees and with plants,” Fontes, 69, said as she sat beneath a skylight at the Maine Mall.

She said Maine could benefit from more shopping centers with green plazas — weather permitting — and cafes that encourage diners to sit and sip for a while. In the winter, Fontes suggested they use plastic igloos, a trend that caught on after the COVID-19 pandemic but remains relatively niche.

A few stores down, Charlens Aurelien said he wants to see a Caribbean restaurant open up that can provide a taste of home while still accommodating large groups.

“We know a couple restaurants, but it’s small businesses,” Aurelien said as he walked through the mall Wednesday afternoon. “We’d like a big thing, where people will come all the time.”

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