Revitalizing Main Street in Vinalhaven

This summer, downtown Vinalhaven looks a little different. Main Street is under construction, as crews dig up pipes under the street and the sidewalks.

The construction is the culmination of an effort years in the making. By combining the town’s skill, spirit, and creative project management and financing, including from the Community Resilience Partnership, Vinalhaven is carrying out a Main Street revitalization that will make its downtown area more resilient.  

Pinpointing the problem on Main Street

Main Street in Vinalhaven has long been prone to nuisance flooding. Whenever it rained, water would pool in front of the grocery store, the nearby crosswalk, and downtown parking lot.

The issue is the stormwater system. Vinalhaven’s stormwater infrastructure was built in pieces over many years as problems arose rather than as one coordinated system. Many of the pipes and culverts are too small for the amount of water they receive; some are rusted, damaged, or poorly connected. Shallow bedrock and narrow roads limited where larger drainage pipes could be installed, so heavy rain and snowmelt, which are predicted to intensify due to climate change, can cause water to back up, flood low areas, and contribute unwanted flow to the wastewater system.

“It’s not a system that is designed to flow, to prevent catch basins from filling and overtopping,” said Gabe McPhail, a Vinalhaven resident and owner of Resilient Communities, a social enterprise that works with municipalities across the state on climate action and planning. “It’s like a bucket in the ground.”  

A downtown master plan created in 2019 outlined the primary issues with the Main Street; in addition to the stormwater system, the town needed to replace the main water line, make sidewalks ADA compliant, and elevate the parking lot to protect the downtown area from extreme tides.

After pinpointing what they needed to do to make their downtown more resilient, Vinalhaven needed funding. In 2023, the municipality received a grant from the Community Resilience Partnership to support the design of a new stormwater system. The grant was one of many that the town had been piecing together over several years for a Main Street revitalization project.

Challenges of constructing island resilience

With funding in place, the next step was to find construction contractors, which can be difficult for island projects. Island construction is logistically challenging. The ferry ride to Vinalhaven from Rockland is about an hour and fifteen minutes. Construction companies need to rent barge transporters to move trucks and materials. The mobilization costs are high enough that contractors usually need to stay from start to finish, which means they can’t take on many other projects in that time frame.

“Anybody who’s thinking of doing a construction project out here really needs to know how manage that transportation,” said Marjorie Stratton, Town Manager of Vinalhaven.

Vinalhaven struggled to get construction companies to bid on their downtown revitalization. So, they had to get creative: they separated the large project into multiple smaller projects.  

“Our intention was to avoid multiple mobilization costs by putting everything into one project, but we learned from a contractor perspective that was prohibitive,” McPhail said. “It's about learning from contractors who have worked on islands or are interested in working on islands what is a realistic way to package the project so that people want to bid on it.”  

Timing also mattered. McPhail said they were originally planning to avoid contracts that extended into the tourist season in July and August, but that was also proving prohibitive.

“It’s about being realistic from the outset on how to get the project done and balancing community need with the project,” McPhail said.

After adjusting their proposal, Vinalhaven received a bid on the stormwater, water, and road and sidewalk projects were able to break ground in March 2026. Stratton said the work is projected to be completed in late 2027.

Communicating for a stronger Vinalhaven

Millie Martin, Vinalhaven’s Director of Public Works, said the work completed so far shows that the Main Street improvements were long overdue.  

“Some of the rocks they’re pulling out right now are almost the size of a vehicle,” Martin said. “We have several places like that where the drainage just no longer works. Others have shifted in place and are either sinking on one side or popping up on one side.”

Communication with Vinalhaven residents has been essential to the project’s success. The town website features a construction schedule and map. The team makes frequent Facebook posts on the town’s page, as well as sending emails and notices to the local paper. They also communicate with townspeople who they know will be directly affected. The personalized approach works especially well in town like Vinalhaven, with a population of 1,200 year-round residents.

“The more forthcoming you can be and the more you can explain the whys, the whens, and the wheres, it gives buy-in,” Martin said. “It sets the town at ease there is going to be a lot of changes but in the end it will all be worth it.”

Overall, though, Martin said that most residents have been on board with the short-term inconvenience for long-term benefit. Martin said that the storms in 2024 were impactful on residents as tides pulled granite out of bridges, swept wharves away, and flooded stores.

“The destruction opened their eyes to what can happen again and again,” Martin said.

The work goes beyond building the resilience of the physical infrastructure, too. Stratton said that she hopes the infrastructure efforts will attract new businesses and increase the vitality of downtown Vinalhaven.

Ultimately, though, the project would not have been possible without the fortitude of the town officials and residents.

“Every challenge that has come up in this project, the town has been willing to commit to keep moving the project forward,” McPhail said. “That's just a really important message, too, of community commitment and having the fortitude to not give up when obstacles are there but find solutions to overcome the obstacles.”