BRUNSWICK

The groundbreaking

Thursday for a new medical office and field house at 14 Thomas Point Road marked an exciting day for the new owner of the property, and a hopeful harbinger for the redevelopment of Cook’s Corner.

Town officials and the developer of the $5 million project says it’s just the beginning.

“We’re looking to focus on Cook’s Corner and revitalize Cook’s Corner and help it recover from the closure of the naval air station,” said Jim Howard of Priority Real Estate Group LLC, which developed the new medical office. “This is the first of what we believe will be five more buildings, totaling 90,000 square feet of office space all along here.”

“I think once this project is up and people see the area around Thomas Point Road is viable for professional office space, that you’ll see this be the beginning of additional projects” in Cook’s Corner, Brunswick Town Manager Gary Brown said.

The project comes on the heels of the Brunswick Naval Air Station closure in an area of “big box” retailers retrenching from the Great Recession.

“I think we can make a lot of strides over the next 12 to 36 months to sort of reinvent and reinvigorate Cook’s Corner and get businesses in and get some more jobs created,” Howard said.

Medical anchor

After last Thursday’s groundbreaking, Dr. Stephen Katz said the new 10,000- square-foot office building, Coastal Ortho: Orthopedics- Sports Medicine-Rehabilitation — and the adjoining 10,000-square-foot field house, Coastal Performance Training Center — will be completed in January.

A Beltone hearing aid center, formerly in the rear of the building at 14 Thomas Point Road, was relocated down the street. Its space will be renovated as part of the project.

Katz said his group, Coastal Orthopedics, is an independent company with a staff of physical therapists, athletic trainers and others in a business that specializes in sports medicine and rehabilitation.

There will be trainers located in the field house, which will have a performance sports center for kids. “It doesn’t have to be the best kid,” Katz said. “It’s the kid who wants to try.”

The new location will consolidate a company spread across six offices from Freeport to Boothbay, and position it between two hospitals in a space where “we can grow; we have the ability to expand, which is great,” Katz said.

He said he hopes to hire additional physical therapists and athletic trainers.

Teen members of the Brunswick Area Teen Center — a program of People Plus — will get free access to the new gym, exercise equipment and health and wellness facility, said Stacy Frizzle, executive director of People Plus.

Paving the way

Katz said he looked at purchasing property earlier at Brunswick Landing, and even at the former Borders bookstore in Merrymeeting Plaza.

Then Howard told him his company could build him what he needed.

Howard said his Priority Real Estate Group LLC went from discussing the project to getting it to the Brunswick Planning Board in about 40 days.

Brown said the Town Council had started focusing on Cook’s Corner in recent months — an area he said has been challenged by a downturn in national retail and hospitality businesses.

While the closures of Borders and Fashion Bug were not because of anything specific to Brunswick, Brown said, officials saw a chance to invest in the Cook’s Corner area to help local businesses get a foothold.

Howard’s project has not required any financial aid from the town, Brown said, so any taxes the business pays will go to offset budget issues.

But the town has made some investment in the area.

In the last couple years, Brown said the town has spent $3 million in infrastructure improvements to Cook’s Corner, first making road improvements from Thomas Point Road to Old Bath Road; this year, working on the Cook’s Corner intersection to Merrymeeting Plaza, and the Route 1 on- and off-ramps to Gurnet Road.

“It certainly made a huge improvement in the traffic flow and comfort of people to drive in Cook’s Corner,” Brown said.

Moving ahead

The town continues to talk with developer George Schott about what may happen with property he owns along Gurnet Road where the Atrium Inn previously stood.

And earlier this year, the town sold property it owned — initially, for a fire substation

— near the backside of Regal Cinemas along Thomas Point Road to Kelley Development, Brown said.

By increasing the overall level of activity in the Cook’s Corner area, the town expects to be able to fill vacant storefronts in the area.

But it won’t be easy.

Over the past 36 months, “we’ve lost a lot of businesses out of Cook’s Corner, and there is a lot of space at Cook’s Corner that needs to be filled before guys like me can ever build a new building,” Howard said. “Every town has that,” he said, not just Brunswick.

There is no indication unemployment will drop enough to justify demand for retail space or new construction, which always drives recoveries, Howard said.

Howard estimates there is 100,000 to 125,000 square feet of empty space in Cook’s Corner cur rently.

But while national restaurant and convenient store chains overbuilt, the health care industry is expanding.

“We currently have plans that we’re working on with the Brunswick Planning Department to develop all the land between Thomas Point Road and Walmart into what will be five buildings and 90,000 square feet of medical office buildings, professional office space, and create a business campus there,” Howard said.

Two of the buildings will likely go up next year and three the following year. Priority Real Estate Group is already in talks with two medical groups interested in space, Howard said.

A potential connector road from Gurnet Road to Thomas Point Road and Walmart is in the works, which would alleviate congestion on Bath Road, Howard said.

That road would cost about $1 million, so developers are asking the town for a municipal tax increment financing agreement. New development would generate enough new tax revenue to pay the town’s expenses for the new road, Howard said.

It is a project that state Sen. Stan Gerzofsky, D-Brunswick, said is the future of Cook’s Corner.

“This is going to take a neighborhood that has seen some blight, and bring professional medical offices to it that are going to serve a tremendous need not only for our community but for our region,” Gerzofsky said. “I see a renaissance for the next several years that’s going to be formed around Cook’s Corner.”

Howard agrees.

The town and Town Council “accurately realized that Cook’s Corner needs attention,” he said.

“We’re hoping the medical office building that we’re putting up for Dr. Katz is the first phase of a redevelopment of Cook’s Corner, and we’ve got great support from Town Manager Gary Brown and the Town Council.”

dmoore@timesrecord.com