CANTON — What needs to be done to revitalize the town and how can residents reshape it for long-term vitality and viability?

That’s the question organizers of the newly formed Canton Development Corp.are asking themselves. The goal of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit is to help with a number of projects the town has not had the resources to complete.

Planning board Secretary Diane Ray said Canton is a “bedroom community,” with people commuting from as far as Portland, Augusta and Farmington as well Rumford, South Paris and Bethel. “So we’re quite a hub for people who commute elsewhere,” she said.

Other than Pinnacle Nursing Home and some relatively small businesses, “we really don’t have a lot of industry,” she said.

Since the 2020 census, when Canton’s population was 1,125, Ray said the town has grown 11%, closer to 1,200 people now.

Ray is one of five corporation directors. The others are Cindy Witas, Daniel Miller, Don Hutchins III and Don Hutchins IV.

“There’s concerned and capable people who want to help execute the town’s future,” Ray said. “We’re all in this together and we need people with different skill sets. The Select Board can’t do it by themselves. The planning board can’t do it by themselves. You have to have a whole community together.”

Ray said the town is at a “crossroads” and in a good position for change.

“The town’s first Comprehensive Plan in over 20 years is advancing and should be in place by the end of this year,” she said. “A cross section of citizens in the town recognize the challenges ahead — the rising cost of municipal services putting tax pressure on already budget-challenged citizens.”

Ray said a nonprofit can access resources that a for-profit, or even a municipality, cannot. One project the corporation may be able to help with is getting the former elementary school cleaned up and repurposed for community recreation.

Ray said part of the challenge is attracting new businesses, but managing growth is just as important.

“We’re facing the same thing that everyone else is facing across the state, which is housing prices,” Ray said. “We had quite a few houses built over the past five years, but they’ve all been single-family homes, very much at the high end, which raises your valuation but doesn’t offer enough access for a kid getting out of school, or if we hire new teachers in the school district, where are they going to live?”

Further, Ray said the town has very few actual rental properties available.

“I think we have three units over the post office,” she said. “There’s really no apartment buildings. There’s almost no retail establishments. You’ve got the Big Apple and Canton Variety, but that’s not enough,” Ray said. “We have no zoning, so how do we identify things like development areas, or corridors or things we might want to do with (tax increment financing agreements) in the future? Also, we don’t have big community gathering spaces.”

Ray said the corporation was introduced at a recent Select Board meeting.

“Having the Canton Development Corp. may have been a bit premature, but it felt like the timing was right to make people aware of it, get them accustomed to the idea that there’s such a group here. So that maybe by the time you want to take on a bigger project, you’re not complete strangers,” she said.

Ray said a lot of the framing for the comprehensive plan was done prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. After years of waning participation, last fall the planning board became full again.

“We looked at our inventory pieces and said let’s get our act together on those and start connecting with more people across the state on how do we creatively find a way to keep the town viable over time,” she said, “because if we just keep doing the same things that we’re doing, costs keep going up and population isn’t growing enough of a tax base to support that. We can’t just keep taxing people at higher and higher rates.”

She said the Select Board has been managing costs well, but they can’t keep cutting municipal services.

“They’re juggling so many things and they’re doing an excellent job of it, but we know that approach is not sustainable,” Ray said. “One of the phrases I think we’re going to put in the comp plan is ‘No one is coming to save us. We have to do it ourselves.'”

In the summer or early fall, there will be a series of public meetings, one of which will be to identify possible development corridors, Ray said.

“We know there are people who want to restore Route 140 between the downtown and the lake,” she said. “Can we get sidewalks back in there? Can we make a safer place for the public beach? There’s no simple solutions. Everything has challenges.”

Besides housing, Ray said another piece of the challenge is how to raise town pride so people are willing and able to keep up their houses and yards?

“If you drive in on Route 108 through town, how do you make people say ‘what a quaint little village?'” she asked. “I feel there’s a lot of vision and a lot of heart for going forward. I think Canton Development Corp. is just one tool in the tool box of all the things that will happen in the next 20 years.”

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