Lewiston has agreed to a one-year lease with Lewiston Rowing for the Red Shop building, pictured Thursday on the edge of Simard-Payne Memorial Park. The lease is effective Sept. 1 and will end Aug. 30, 2026. (Libby Kamrowski Kenny/Staff Photographer)

LEWISTON — An agreement between a local rowing group and the city could lead to the development of a permanent community venue on the banks of the Androscoggin River that hosts summer camps, yoga classes, rowing clinics and more, according to leaders of the effort.

Amy Smith is the founder and executive director of Lewiston Rowing. (Christopher Wheelock/Staff Writer)

The city has agreed to a one-year lease with Lewiston Rowing for the Red Shop building on the edge of Simard-Payne Memorial Park. The lease is effective Sept. 1 through Aug. 30, 2026.

The city will get a small amount of money — $110 a month — and the nonprofit rowing group will have an agreement that allows them to store boats and equipment. It’s been an informal agreement since 2024.

Amy Smith is Lewiston Rowing’s founder and executive director. She says the building that most people overlook is close to the Androscoggin River and the dock it owns anyone can use.

“The reason we wanted a full year was because we wanted the opportunity to sort of test this out as a really potential nice piece of infrastructure at the park,” she said.

By that, she means a possible venue to host summer camps, yoga classes, rowing clinics and the like. It is the only permanent piece of infrastructure in the park currently. It’s not much to look at from the outside, but the Red Shop is actually a piece of Lewiston’s history. It was built in 1938 on the canal system to control the flow of water in one area and as a machine shop for the Bates Mill complex.

“It generated its own power,” Smith said. “It controlled the flow of the water from the canals to the river, and it has giant infrastructure like a giant sawmill for cutting beams and lumber as I understand it.”

Inside the dilapidated building is a solidly built frame of timbers, steel and concrete. The city has done some work to maintain the integrity of the structure, which is about 2,400 square feet in size and has two levels.

A rendering of what the Red Shop building in Lewiston could be converted into as a possible venue. (Courtesy of the city of Lewiston)

The city has talked about possible uses for the nondescript building, which has been vacant for a long time. However, it is not included in the city’s Riverfront Master Plan for redevelopment of the riverfront area.

Smith says she thinks the Red Shop building as a community venue could come to fruition through a public-private partnership and she has pitched her ideas to the city before. She’d like to see the addition of two bathrooms, a viewing deck overlooking the river and a small kitchen for events. The venue could be rented out for festivals or other smaller events and would still provide Lewiston Rowing with a place to store all its boats and equipment.

“The other thing we want to do is make the dock and the riverfront accessible to more people,” Smith explained, adding that not a lot of people in Lewiston own rowing shells. “But tons of people do (own) kayaks, supboards (stand up paddle boards), so we wanted to sort of focus on broadening the access.” 

The Red Shop building at 38 Water St. in Lewiston is used to store boats and equipment for Lewiston Rowing, but could become a community venue. (Christopher Wheelock/Staff Writer)

To that end, she put out a short survey during the Lewiston-Auburn Balloon Festival on boat storage by the river, something that is mentioned in the riverfront redevelopment master plan.

“People were very enthusiastic, especially if you live downtown,” Smith said. “And (if) you have a canoe or a kayak or an inflatable board, you’ve got to car top it to get over here. But then you’ve got to store it. If you’re living in an apartment, where are you going to store a kayak ?”

With the Maine MILL museum and Continental Mill housing construction well under way nearby, Smith points out that hundreds of people will be living along the waterfront and visiting the museum in the next few years.

The Red Shop building at 38 Water St. in Lewiston was built to control the flow of water in the canals and as a machine shop for the Bates Mill complex. The building at the edge of Simard-Payne Memorial Park is used to store boats and equipment for Lewiston Rowing, but some envision it becoming a community venue.  (Libby Kamrowski Kenny/Staff Photographer)

“Our plan is to have a few pop-up events this fall to gather community input on how people might envision using a facility like this if it was available to the public.”

The city’s annual Riverfest event, a two-day celebration of the river with a variety of rowing events, was put on pause this year in anticipation of canal construction getting started this summer, but that did not materialize. Smith wants to bring the event back in 2026.

“It may be that we add our regatta to an existing event rather than the whole full-blown, two-day Riverfest,” she said. “We are considering adding events that are not just rowing, but for paddleboards, for kayaks, just for fun … like cardboard boat races.” (Cardboard boat races involve just cardboard and duct tape — that’s all you are allowed to use — and a race to the finish line.)

“We just want people to understand what an amazing amenity the river is for the city,” Smith added.

Lewiston Rowing can be contacted at [email protected] and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/lewistonrowing.