BELLOWS FALLS — From serendipitous beginnings, the Exner Block has been a collaboration with the local community, other interested individuals and several Vermont organizations such as Vermont Housing and the Rockingham Area Community Land Trust (RACLT).
Robert McBride is the acknowledged visionary behind the Exner Block, at 7 Canal St., which is celebrating 10 successful years there at 3 p.m. on Oct. 7, beginning at the Rockingham Arts and Museum Project (RAMP) offices, followed by a gathering at 4 p.m. in the newly renovated Windham Hotel to listen to guest speaker Emily Wadhams.
“We wanted to recreate the ribbon cutting ceremony, show people around to see what we've done, to have some sort of celebration of our success,” McBride said with a grin.
McBride and Development Director Francis “Dutch” Walsh put together Exner's 10-year “celebration of success” and Bellows Falls Downtown Development Alliance's presentation by Wadhams, the vice president for public policy at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
“Emily was involved … when she was Vermont State Preservation officer,” McBride said. “It was a perfect fit.”
McBride also chairs the Northeast Board of Advisors of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, serves as a member-at-large for the Windham Regional Commission and serves on the Connecticut River Byway Council.
A painter, he has an master of fine arts degree from Hunter College. He bought his home in Bellows Falls in 1982.
About 15 years ago, he was founding director of RAMP, whose mission remains “revitalizing the community by developing awareness of the arts, creating vitality in the community with the arts, and demonstrating that the arts favorably impact the local economy.”
“I'm an artist. My head is always full of ideas. I loved this community since I first came up here for a dinner party in the early 1980s,” McBride said. Of his house overlooking the canal and train yard, he says, “I just love the view,” and “now I go to New York to relax.”
McBride's presence at a Selectboard meeting in 1998 garnered a serendipitous introduction to Andrew Broderick of Housing Vermont, a not-for-profit company that “creates rental housing intended to be permanent and affordable for Vermonters through partnerships with local organizations, public agencies and the private sector,” as mandated by state law.
“I usually just do my thing and leave,” McBride said. “I was at the Selectboard meeting giving an update on RAMP [and I was] on the agenda before Housing Vermont who was asking [for] support [for] their proposal to purchase the Exner [building]…[and to] follow up grant applications to create affordable housing there.”
“When Andy heard what I was doing [with RAMP], he asked if I wanted to partner with them on the Exner project. It was a natural fit,” said McBride. “Since there is a limited backyard and it fronts right on the street, it wasn't really suitable for families, but it was perfect for artists.”
“It was the first major investment [in downtown Bellows Falls] in a long time,” he added. “There's less of a risk factor when housing is involved.”
But McBride said the vision also meant “rolling up our sleeves and doing some hard work.”
Mixing art, history
“Culture” and “heritage” are two words never far from McBride's lips. He talks animatedly about what he considers the cultural heritage of a town like Bellows Falls.
“Industry grew up along the Connecticut River, and I am fascinated with the history that Bellows Falls is front and center of,” McBride said. “I love the Square, and especially that bell tower,” he said, grinning. “I call it 'Vermont's Venice,' because of the canal.”
In 2003, as a founding member of the Vermont Council on Culture and Innovation, McBride envisioned Bellows Falls' historically blue-collar community combining with a community where the arts contribute to the economic and social quality of life. He wanted to see a place where culture and heritage play deeply in an area that still shows the beginnings of transportation and industrial history of Vermont and the Connecticut River byway.
The partnership with Vermont Housing and RACLT and the support of businesses and community members brought to town affordable housing for artists in the renovated and refurbished Exner Building. Its original pressed-tin ceilings, ornate façade and much of the original wood flooring remain, and it sits just above the historic canal.
Providing affordable living with a preference toward artists and a place for several galleries along the storefront is McBride's dream manifest.
“We've got a full house,” he said.
Industrial heritage
His fascination with Vermont's industrial town main streets predicated his involvement in establishing the Connecticut River byway, with particular focus on a 2006 project, “From Mills to Main Streets.”
“We don't have to change anything,” he said. “We just have to be who we are. And who we are is a former industrial town that sits above a canal and the Connecticut River, with a significant American industrial history, and a main street.”
McBride notes the gradual disappearance of main streets across America, which have given way to malls and sprawling urban development.
Not so in Bellows Falls.
“Here, we have a hardware store, a bank, a bookstore, an opera house and theater, a bell tower, and restaurants,” he pointed out. “You can park in the Square or down here on Canal Street, and walk to many different kinds of businesses.”
“It has the compact feeling, especially with the bell tower over the Square, of an Italian hill town,” McBride mused.
He noted that the renovated Howard Block, which sits across the Square from the Windham Hotel, houses several different businesses.
Both the Waypoint Center and the Exner Block have created a momentum for the revitalization of the downtown area of Bellows Falls. The two buildings have benefitted from investments of millions of dollars in the last 10-15 years, he said.
“We've got a strong second generation of investors and people willing to do the work to make it,” McBride said. “Sure, the economy has a slowing effect on how fast things get done. But we've got the old Sam's building that was just bought with a new business going in, and we've got the Windham Hotel opening back up. It's a very organic process.”
Changing times, changing main street
A community's main street needs to fit with the population of the community, according to McBride.
“Some communities want to recreate [Main Street] based on nostalgia - what it was when they grew up,” he said. “But that's not going to happen.”
Needs aren't the same. The old J.J. Newbury's store is now the home of Vermont Pretzel. The old Aubuchon Hardware space in the Howard Block now serves several storefront businesses.
The creative economy that thrives in Vermont so well supports more specialized “new idea” businesses, but McBride feels a diversified Main Street is an authentic one in today's economy.
“There need to be many reasons for a person to visit the Square, Canal Street and the Waypoint Center,” he said, “and there needs to be housing so people can live on Main Street.”
McBride adamantly wants Bellows Falls to avoid the fate of many other communities that attracted artists.
In many places, artists have moved to a town in disrepair, attracted by affordable rents, and have made improvements. But that hard work and effort often results in gentrification - the social and economic changes that occur when wealthy people buy and renovate areas in disrepair.
These changes too often result in higher property values and higher rents, driving out the very people who adopted a community and made it attractive to others.
“Gentrification is not a model for success,” he said. Instead, McBride said he wants a more inclusive community.
“I want Friday nights when all the stores are open until 9 and the community can come into town and do shopping,” McBride said. “With Lisai's opening their new store on Atkinson Street, you can go grocery shopping, go to the hardware store, get something to eat, go see a show, and browse art galleries.”
McBride stresses the importance of a creative approach to business and development in downtown Bellows Falls today, as well as a companionable vision with the community that exists here.
“We don't want to shove it down people's throats,” he said, “but work within the spectrum [of diversity] that exists.”
An organic process
While McBride comes from a background in the arts, he's not promoting art classes or art on every corner.
“We're providing the context,” he said.
He would consider his vision a success if “a skateboarder stopped and got off to read a poster in a window,” saying it's just that “they have access to it” referring to the cultural heritage of Bellows Falls as well as the art and artists that live and work there.
He sees Vermont as unique with its access to people and ideas, as well as its regional connections along the Connecticut. He doesn't see Bellows Falls as isolated but as a part of a larger region that includes Walpole, Charlestown and Claremont on the New Hampshire side and Chester, Springfield and Windsor on the Vermont side.
Pointing to the community participation in two public art projects, McBride sees historic preservation as an investment that resonates within the community.
“People were worried about graffiti,” McBride remembered, speaking of the two mural projects on the building coming into the Square on Rockingham Street facing south, and the murals, silhouettes, on the buildings leading down to and on the Grist Mill near the rail tunnel under the Square.
“But I said, well, if it happens we'll just paint over it. But we've never had a problem with graffiti,” he recalled.
“Community development is an organic process and this community is still organically growing,” McBride said.
“There's creativity in all those pursuits,” McBride said. “If you apply creativity to what you have, then you have a creative community. Anyone can contribute just by sweeping the sidewalk in front of their business, mowing their lawn, or by the simple act of opening the door for someone at the post office.”
The business of creativity
McBride notes those like Charlie Hunter (Flying Under Radar) and Ray Massucco (Roots on the River) have integrated their passions into the community with their vibrant undertakings.
“Artists have a responsibility to their community to be good business partners.”
For that to happen, artists need to hone their business skills, a need that RAMP tries to accommodate. “We host business classes several times a year for artists,” he added.
Perhaps not ironically, McBride would consider any nonprofit a success if it were absorbed by the community and put out of business.
“The need it was created to fill goes away,” McBride said, speaking of RAMP.
Creative economies are vital and important for the future of Vermont communities, McBride said.
“We don't need to change who we are. We just need to be more ourselves” to be a success, McBride said. “We have it all within our community. Involvement is just a matter of backing up your creative idea with the hard work needed to make it reality.”
“I've seen more creative plumbers than the least creative of artists,” he noted. “When you apply creativity to all pursuits, you have a vital, creative community.”