Bill’s World
By Michaela Cavallaro
Mainebiz
October 2, 2000
Bill Johnson will tell anyone who asks: the actions he’s taken to restore and upgrade commercial buildings in a few blocks of downtown Lewiston were definitely in his own interest.
After all, he didn’t purchase the vacant Peck Building, which had been the city’s largest department store, in the mid-1980s as a charity project. He sold the $10 million project to L.L. Bean to use as a telecommunications center in 1987 for an undisclosed amount. Nor was his work on 217 Main St., which now houses a branch of Peoples Heritage Bank, the insurance agency that bears Johnson’s name, an Internal Revenue Service office and several other businesses, purely a noble undertaking to revitalize an underused section of Lewiston.
Johnson also donated his services to the city’s pursuit of a district courthouse; for no fee, he optioned the real estate necessary to make the $7.5 million project a reality. When asked about his motives for doing that work for free, Johnson is frank. “If I wanted to build value in 217 Main St., to increase the value of the properties, you need to build up the neighborhood,” he says. “A friend of mind owned the opera building (which is the site of a new courthouse) and I owned property around it. I thought it would increase in value, and it did . . . The courthouse is the catalyst.”
Johnson, you see, is in the business of making money. Along the way, however, this Lewiston native – Lewiston High School, class of 1966 – has kickstarted a major turnaround of a six-block area of the crumbling downtown he remembers as a hot spot from his childhood. And with his latest project, the renovation and rehab of the century-old Interurban Building, Johnson hopes to solidify what he sees as Lewiston’s growing reputation as a legal, medical and banking center for western Maine.
Johnson first began thinking about Lewiston’s future in those terms about three years ago. After a car accident, in which he suffered a herniated disk in his back, Johnson began working with a group of doctors at Medical Rehabilitation Associates, who encourage patient rehab and pain management as an alternative to surgery. From those sessions, Johnson not only got a better back – he got a business plan.
Given Lewiston’s two hospitals – and the location of Johnson’s properties in between them – it seemed only natural that the old garage that came along with the 217 Main St. property be utilized for medical services. So Johnson decided to begin the project, originally budgeted at $1.5 million, with a final cost of nearly $5 million after plans were expanded, that caused more than a few people around town to questions his sanity.
Rather than simply knock down the aging brick building that had served as a garage for the trolley cars that ran between Lewiston and Portland, and replace it with something shiny and new, Johnson decided to preserve the building’s exterior while gutting the interior. “In order to attract tenants,” he says, “you have to be something unique. What would make Dr. So-and-so go into that building instead of another?”
So Johnson gambled on the building’s 16-inch thick solid brick walls lined with red cement. In building a second story and expanding the first, Johnson made sure to match the dye in the cement; he also had any old bricks that were no longer necessary saved, so that deteriorating sections could be preserved with original materials.
From the outside of what is now called the Trolley Medical Building, the effect isn’t noticeable until you look closely. The second story exterior looks somehow too new, too pristine, when viewed atop the nicked bricks and small, aged pipes that Johnson purposely left sticking out from the walls.
Inside, the large suite of offices occupied by Medical Rehabilitation Associates combined the charm of aged brick with the modern efficiency of sheetrock and paint. In the waiting room, trolleys trundle across the wallpaper. Large reproductions of historical photos show horse-drawn carriages alongside trolleys turning into the garage’s wide doors. The scale of the original garage itself has been retained in the center’s large, tall-ceilinged gym, where, on a recent day, two patients worked on weight equipment under the watchful eye of physical therapists.
Johnson feels that his theory about the dollar value of a building’s character, identity and stability has been proven true. While he won’t reveal the rents he charges in the buildings, Johnson is satisfied with his investment. Medical Rehabilitation Associates occupies 14,000 sq. ft.; another 18,000 sq. ft. is used by a St. Mary’s clinic that deals with work-related medical issues. Ever the businessman, John agreed to be interviewed for this story in the hope that it would draw attention to the 8,000 sq. ft. still available in the building.
Though Johnson is dismayed that he hasn’t seen more follow-through from other developers who are looking to put commercial tenants downtown, he’s convinced that his approach is the right one – and that it will distinguish Lewiston from its retail-oriented neighbor to the south. “Does it make any sense at all to take Old Navy and every other store and move it 30 miles up the road (from Portland)?,” he asks. “Is there population enough in Maine to have seven Gaps? I don’t think so.”
