Category: Business & Nonprofits

The buyers of a beloved former local business are working diligently to prepare the site for their new venture, which they plan to open the Thursday before Memorial Day under a new name that pays homage to the original.

Internet service provider Consolidated Communications is hitting the streets of Harpswell again to continue building out its Fidium fiber-optic broadband network in the town.

Those seeking to rehabilitate a 70-year-old public building at Mitchell Field in Harpswell should be given a chance to try to raise private funds to save the structure before the town tears it down, a Midcoast Council of Governments senior planner said.

After a November fire brought an abrupt end to The School House 1913, a new restaurant will soon open in the space, with a new chef, new general manager and new hours.

Fishnet Cafe owner Joan Ouellette has sold her popular Bailey Island restaurant to niece Sara King, who plans to reopen the seasonal eatery in May. If you’re going to sell your restaurant, what better person to buy it than someone in your own family?

Uncle Pete’s Community Market has new owners who are keeping the store open seven days a week instead of five. The Patel family — Sky, Mike, M.P. and Annie — immediately made the change after buying the market next to the post office on Harpswell Neck Road.

Why own just one restaurant when you can have two? “Life is short,” said Khristine Leeman, who, with her husband, Zac Leeman, launched Sundrenched on Bailey Island in 2022. Later this month they plan to open eatery No. 2, Linden + Front, at 244 Front St. in Bath.

Harpswell is surrounded by rockweed. At low tide, wherever you look along the town’s rocky shoreline (and almost all the shoreline is rocky), you will see this seaweed delineating the boundary between land and water. It’s like a yellow-green ribbon outlining all the town’s islands, peninsulas and ledges.

The trial has been postponed again in a lawsuit seeking to force the sale of a sliver of working waterfront on Orr’s Island known as Barleyfield Point.

As a kid growing up in Tempe, Arizona, I never could have imagined that I would one day become a news reporter in Harpswell, Maine. The notion that I would then eat a Harpswell lobster roll in my hometown of Tempe — and write a story about it — would have seemed even more far-fetched, like the lobster roll version of Christopher Nolan’s “Inception.”

The future of The School House 1913 restaurant on Harpswell Neck is uncertain after a fire in an apartment above the restaurant on Nov. 28. Despite a quick stop by firefighters and minimal damage to the restaurant space, the business has been closed since the fire.

Wireless carrier Verizon has indicated it may not meet a previously estimated target of spring 2024 to upgrade its network in Harpswell by adding a transceiver to a nearly 200-foot-tall cell tower at George J. Mitchell Field.

Organizers of the Harpswell Santa Fund hosted an all-day fundraiser on Saturday, Dec. 2, and they plan to make it an annual tradition. Organized by local residents including Pammy Douglas, Jodi Wallace and Evan Weston, the event was held jointly at Pammy’s Ice Cream Parlor and the adjacent Harpswell Neck Fire and Rescue station.

The trial has been postponed for a lawsuit seeking to force the sale of a sliver of working waterfront on Orr’s Island known as Barleyfield Point. A three-day bench trial was scheduled to begin Wednesday, Nov. 29, but has been rescheduled for 8:30 a.m., Tuesday, Jan. 9, according to court documents.

After months of delays, the Itty Bitty Coffee Shop in Harpswell Center will have a “soft opening” from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1. Starting Dec. 12, the tiny coffee shop — hence its name — will be open every Tuesday-Saturday, from 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Pete Arnold, owner of Uncle Pete’s Community Market on Harpswell Neck Road, has signed a contract to sell the store. The market, the land, and the gas and diesel pumps had been on the market for nearly a year.

The new owners of the former Vegetable Corner site at Harpswell Neck and Mountain roads say they plan to open a seasonal market, bakery and cafe called Corner Market with the eventual goal of making it a year-round business.

The Harpswell Planning Board has placed new conditions on its pending approval of a project to redevelop the former Estes Lobster House in South Harpswell into a single-family home, including the completion of stormwater management and landscaping plans.