Maine college invests in once-struggling mill town, hoping rising tide will lift both

October 24th, 2021

WATERVILLE, Maine — Colby College president David Greene stood on a dusty street corner in this central Maine city, looking at the buckled downtown sidewalk and a weed-speckled hole in the cracked concrete.

“There once was a tree there,” said Greene, who would like to see another fill the space.

Bringing trees back to Main Street is not a novel idea, but the ongoing revitalization of this former mill city goes far beyond plantings and sidewalk beautification. It’s one small, aesthetic piece of a broad and ambitious plan, driven largely by Colby, to restore vitality and good jobs to a small city that had lost much of both over the decades.

Read the full Boston Globe article here.

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