Assessing What We Have
In addition to the City’s assets, the report offers downtown districts, movement patterns, relational offerings, and many forward-thinking growth opportunities. The completion of this study is timely as the City plans to begin deliberations for its revised comprehensive plan in 2023. Copies of the final report were presented to the Ellsworth City Council at the December 2022 meeting and a press release was published in Jan of 2023.
Next Steps
The intention of this report is to assist Ellsworth in its path forward, encouraging residents, leaders, and business owners to think big as Ellsworth moves into its next ten years of development. Future plans include meetings to thoroughly discuss report findings and find ways to execute the report's final section - big ideas. A hard copy of the report is also available to review at the Ellsworth Public Library, or by appointment at the Heart of Ellsworth office on State Street in downtown Ellsworth. If you are interested in learning more, email Executive Director Cara Romano at cara@heartofellsworth.org including Asset Mapping in the subject line.
Asset Mapping
The two-time award-winning Downtown Asset Mapping Project is complete! This project is a collaborative effort with City of Ellsworth, sponsored by Franklin Savings Bank with support from the Maine Community Foundation and led by HUB Collective. The project goal is to understand the current assets of the downtown area and explore its potential. Asset mapping is a systematic process of cataloging key services, benefits, and resources within a community, such as organizational resources, physical space, institutions, associations, and elements of the local economy, and in this case a heavy focus on community vision.
About the Process
Over a three-day series of workshops in April of 2022 HUB Collective designed and conducted a series of community engagement opportunities, where a wide variety of perspectives were captured. Each session was tailored to the audience attending. The insights gathered during this 3-day engagement have been compiled into the asset map and visioning document resulting in the asset map report, Manifesting Main. These insight sessions were engaging and highly collaborative with activities and exercises that helped define what we have, what we might want to attract, and what we need to help get us there.
Part IV of the study illustrates the downtown broken up into districts. This assists the reader in connecting with the experiences and qualities of a neighborhood system, each having its own assets, advantages, and challenges, ultimately contributing to a richer concept of Downtown.
2023 Maine Development Foundation annual Award Ceremony in Brunswick, Maine. Pictured here Heart of Ellsworth board & staff with project partners City of Ellsworth and HUB Collective, staff from the Maine Downtown Center, and members of the MDC board of advisors.
Project Awards & Recognition
In April of 2023, Heart of Ellsworth won the Maine Downtown Center’s Project of the Year award. Each year, one award is granted to an organization for a project that has substantially impacted a downtown district around the state. In October, a Smart Growth Award honored the Manifesting Main project from GrowSmart Maine. Each year the organization gives out four awards to projects that contribute to a more sustainable and prosperous Maine.
