It’s 11 p.m. on a Tuesday. The Skybox Bar and Grill on Brown Street has closed, as has Fajita Grill on Main Street, though a few stragglers finish their meals inside the restaurant. Profenno’s Bar and Grill on Main Street remains open, with a healthy handful of patrons. Teenage girls walk in threes down Brown Street, carefree as a police cruiser passes on patrol. A teen boy rides his bike across the Bridge Street bridge while a 20-something man sits next to his tripod, taking long-exposure shots of the Saccarappa Falls.

An outbound Portland Metro bus pulls up to a stop on Main Street just before 11:15, with two getting off and a half dozen waiting to get on. At the next bus stop, another man waits. A group of skateboarders ride up the street.

“A lot of downtowns, by 5 o’clock, are barren,” said Dick Begin, Westbrook Housing’s senior program officer for community development.

But not Westbrook, where the night life on Main Street goes long after 5 p.m. With new businesses starting and old businesses relocating all along Main Street, and with downtown condos bringing in new residents, there is a new vitality in the city and a sense that the growth is not going to stop.

“I would have to say the reconstruction of the downtown has been accelerated since 1999, 2000. The last four years have been very accelerated. The process is clear and consistent,” said Erik Carson, Westbrook community and economic development director Erik Carson.

Good numbers of people walk the Riverwalk on lunch, or can be seen with a fishing pole in hand on a bench along the river. Teens cover Saccarappa Park, hopping into the river.

This wasn’t always the case. In fact, Begin said, just a few years ago a problem hit him when the Riverwalk was first completed. He would get lunch with his wife at Chicky’s or walk the Riverwalk on a Saturday, and “there was no one there,” said Begin.

“Like everyone writing the story, Westbrook is the up-and-coming place,” said James Tranchemontagne, whose new restaurant, The Frog and Turtle, is currently in construction phase at the old Chicky’s location on Bridge Street, and will be opening in September.

Summer’s summary

“Thirty-thousand cars drive through the city each day,” Carson said. “What we try to do is capture that market, beyond just convenience.” The goal, said Carson, is to get people to eat, work and sleep in Westbrook.

In just the past few weeks Mr. Bagel has moved from its out-of-the-way location on Stroudwater Street to a more central location next to Subway on Main Street. Freaky Bean, a coffee shop, has opened up its new location next to Bank of America. Pizza Time is under renovation, and the owners of Vallee Square, at the corner of Bridge and Main streets, have begun moving forward on refacing the building and creating a new corner retail space in the process. Pete Profenno has received approval for a new retail, office and apartment building on the Main Street site of his old restaurant that burned down, while he will maintain his operations at his new Main Street site. A new rental company has opened on Main Street, and the education and marketing company Legacy Parenting has purchased the old St. Mary’s school, and will move its offices to a more central downtown location from the Dana Warp Mill. There are offers on the table for the St. Mary’s church and rectory.

All that activity, according to business owners, is one of the reasons why more business is coming in, which in turn is bringing more business.

But not limited to business alone, as Carson points out, housing in the downtown area is developing, as well. Riverfront Lofts, a condominium complex in the old Sebago-Moc building next to the Dana Warp Mill, is currently in construction. The majority of the low-priced units have long been sold, with 31 of the 44 units under contract or with contracts pending. The building’s second floor move-in date isn’t scheduled until November.

The loft-style complex in an old mill building has exposed brick walls and hardwood floors, is just steps away from delis, retail shops, restaurants and bars, and is attracting a diverse crowd. The project is being done with the Westbrook Development Corp., a nonprofit arm connected to Westbrook Housing. The project was aimed at moderate income and first-time home buyers, and was not marketed.

“We wanted to try to attract as many locals as possible,” said Guy Gagnon, director of development at Westbrook Housing. Gagnon said a number of workers at the Dana Warp Mill and the Disability RMS building have put deposits down, as well as a number of local residents.

“The city wants to keep downtown more of a 24-hour place. We’re trying to do the most with that,” Gagnon said.

Moving in

Ellen Esty, a dental hygienist in Falmouth who currently rents in Portland, said purchasing one of the second-floor condos at Riverfront Lofts “was a no-brainer.”

“It’s low cost, but I think it’s a space that will attract some really interesting people,” Esty said. “This is exactly what I want.”

Esty said she had been looking around Portland for a similar, artsy-feeling space, “but to get this feel,” she said, pointing at the raw open space at her new, unfinished digs, “I wasn’t able to afford that.” And as far as travel distance, Esty said, she could ride her bike to Portland.

“There’s not a lot in the marketplace with this type of feel,” said Willie Audet, the real estate broker for the building, which was once a silk mill.

“The market has appreciated dramatically over the last five years. Now we’re seeing it stabilize,” said Audet. “This (building) bucks that trend because of its attractiveness and pricing.”

One of the condos was originally priced at $89,900, and was the first to go, Audet said. The larger, two-bedroom condos in a separate building known as the Creamery, which borders the river, are priced up to $232,900.

The Riverfront Lofts come in just across the street from another recent Westbrook Housing project, Homestead Village on Saco Street, that adds more affordable housing to the downtown market.

“One of the things we were always interested in and always trying to do is bring more housing downtown,” said Begin, noting that the more housing that comes in downtown, the more activity there will be to provide in the after-5 crowd that adds to the vibrancy of a city. Begin said there have been a number of projects that have put rental apartments on the edges of downtown, but more rental properties are needed.

Carson, among others, has also noted that the costs of living in Portland compared to Westbrook make Westbrook a bargain, and that traveling from the outskirts of the Greater Portland area is taking longer and longer, especially on Route 302. Instead of traveling from the outer edges to Portland’s economic hub – which is as far east as one can go in the area – people are noting Westbrook living is a more geographically centered area.

But locating in Westbrook wouldn’t be worth much without the services people need, and the services wouldn’t come without the people. Within that is the cycle that is contributing to the accelerated development.

Tom Gangewer, owner of Burrito on Main Street, said his decision to open his burrito shop in Westbrook in 2005 was a matter of watching the changes happen in Westbrook.

“I think it had a lot to do with the perception that a lot of development was about to happen in Westbrook,” Gangewer said. His partner, Jim Belanger, grew up in Westbrook and had seen the changes.

Gangewer said the publicity of Idexx and Disability RMS and all the business going into the Dana Warp Mill contributed to the perception. For Gangewer personally, he said he was working at Sappi Fine Paper when the Disability RMS building was built, and it was the key development that signaled to him there was something going on in Westbrook.

Gangewer has, just this past June, also made the leap and moved to Westbrook from Portland. Now Gangewer is just waiting for the city to fully become a walking city. It’s almost there, he said, but not quite yet.

James Tranchemontagne is coming into Westbrook in the opposite order. A couple years ago he took up residency in Westbrook, and his new business – sitting atop five years of high praise for Uffa, his classy restaurant in Portland’s Longfellow Square – will follow, filling in the void Chicky’s left earlier this year.

The Frog and Turtle, on schedule to open Sept. 5, is a new restaurant and pub venture for Tranchemontagne. He is bringing his staff from Uffa along with him, and he said everyone is pumped. Tranchemontagne, of a French-Canadian background, said he expects excitement from many people in Westbrook’s Frenchtown area, around the corner from his spot on Bridge Street. He said he’ll be serving up a few new dishes “like mema and pepa used to make.” The pub area will seat 10 people and have a mug club with microbrews.

Tranchemontagne said it made sense to him to move a successful restaurant out of Portland because he expects regular customers to follow him. He also sees the Portland market as saturated and his potential customer base as growing. People in outlying areas who might not drive all the way into Portland will more likely make the shorter trek into Westbrook.

The former Chicky’s was also a regional attraction as a music venue, and Tranchemontagne isn’t missing a beat there. In addition to weekend bands (“a little more blues” than Chicky’s, Tranchemontagne said), he is working out the details of a potential monthly fiddling contest.

Centering in

While Tranchemontagne is aiming at the larger geographic area, others are centering in on Westbrook itself.

Andy Cottrell, owner of the Mr. Bagel that just moved onto Main Street from the corner of William Clarke Drive and Stroudwater Street, said the shop had been at its old location for five years, but “we always felt Mr. Bagel was a Main Street business.”

Steve Anderson, president of the educational publishing and marketing business Legacy Parenting, said the recent purchase of the old St. Mary’s school and coming renovations will give his company a more modern office, but more importantly, will put his business in a more central location than the Dana Warp Mill.

“Plus, we love the site. It’s just a beautiful building,” Anderson said.

Elisabeth Magnusson, of Magnusson Balfour, the real estate broker for the St. Mary’s school, church and rectory, said the location is prime in the city, as well in the greater geographic area.

“There are a lot of people seeking their way into Westbrook now,” Magnusson said.

For Cliff Roy, a retiree who runs a hot dog stand in Riverbank Park, his move from Monument Square in Portland to Westbrook two years ago is more personal.

“The area is cleaner, much cleaner. There seems to be a little bit more respect for the environment than in Portland,” Roy said. “There’s quality, an atmosphere, in the way people respect each other.”

Roy said local police officers stop by for hot dogs, which is something he said didn’t happen in the six years he was at Monument Square.

Roy gestured to the Presumpscot River behind his stand.

“How can you beat that?” he asked.