The most important principle for Freeport’s future–Think Different
One of the things I’m sure to repeat often here is my belief that Freeport’s future economy depends on differentiation.
Freeport’s brand position is the perception people have of us vs. other similar or competitive places. It is whatever is in the heads of someone thinking of moving here, of companies considering locating to town or of tourists deciding where to visit/shop.
Freeport’s success to date is because it is one-of-a-kind. No other place has the L.L. Bean flagship store and Outdoor Discovery Schools. No other place has as diverse a local and national chain store shopping experience integrated in a traditional New England village. No other place has the Mast Landing School. There are obviously lots more differentiators, but you get the point.
Like the famous campaign that restored Apple’s reputation, Freeport needs to Think Different.
Our future strength rests on a commitment to looking at each development decision through a lens of whether it will make us different than our competition or push us towards sameness.
It is one of the reasons I think it is wrong to be positioning the new Freeport Village Center as a “lifestyle center.” Lifestyle Centers are a relatively new mall concept that tries to duplicate the street feel of traditional village architecture (wikipedia definition here.) There’s a good piece on them in Slate called “The Mall Goes Undercover“, and a CNN/Money article says:
“Unlike the massive, windowless 800,000 square foot suburban malls anchored by a discount or department store like Target or Sears, lifestyle centers tend to be smaller, around 50,000 square feet. They’re often open-air venues — like a cute little village — and are devoid of an anchor store.”
It’s the “cute little village” bit that disturbs me. Freeport is the original lifestyle center–the real, genuine shopping village that these fabricated mini-malls are trying to replicate. We have history, authenticity and realness that they will never have. Lifestyle centers are our competition. We should be trying to crush them, not follow them.
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Comments
Isnt Freeport already tipped dangerously toward being a “lifestyle center”? (That phrase makes me shiver.) DeRosiers, Bow Street Market, Azure, and a handful of other local businesses are all that stand between Freeport and mini-mall status. How can we help nudge our town the other way? Can we give incentives for local businesses & services to locate in the new Freeport Village Center?
I’m planning to write more about this, but Freeport’s mix is a lot more local than you might realize. The exception, obviously, is the immediate L.L. Bean (a local biz) core. Our secret sauce for the future, IMO, is this mix. You can find a GAP outlet lots of places. But where else can you take a fly fishing lesson in the morning, pick up some jeans and eat dinner at a world class BBQ restaurant. The best nudge we can give, I think, is with our wallets. Are you really saving when you shop at Flaws rather than Bow Street Market?
Freeport Schools, the Town Council and L.L. Bean
My goal for the past year or so, has been to work to increase local school funding in order to get Freeport to the “high achieving school district” status, as defined by the MDOE. Simple and focused, a clear goal the community can all rally around. With the latest school budget vote I see we are making some headway, that is good news.
Another issue on my mind of late has been the role of L.L. Bean in our town. No doubt, more private grants would be helpful for funding our schools, and for improving our quality of life in Freeport. I have been encouraging more grant writing, however grant writing takes a good deal of time and effort, time that I do not have right now. I bring up the issue in hopes that someone will begin the grant writing process with L.L. Bean. We need the support of our largest town asset to move our schools forward effectively.
Freeport is close to achieving the goal of a high performing school district. Once we are there, we need to begin to restore some of the programs that have been eliminated in recent budget cuts, and expand into other neglected areas of the school budget, like technology. This requires strong town leadership that views the public schools as an invaluable public asset.
Our current Town Council is no friend of the public schools. We have to work to find better candidates, school and family friendly candidates. The Freeport Town Councilors are tools of the towns business interests. I see Councilor Muldoon as the only strong public school supporter.
I also feel the business community in this town has too much power, they cost the community valuable resources, the Town Council works hard to represent business interests over quality of life and family issues. L.L. Bean’s expansion and business practices of late actually harm Freeport Schools, a serious problem that needs addressing. L.L. Bean needs to support the Town of Freeport with financial resources to a much greater extent, our roads, police and fire budgets are all strained to to the L.L. Bean traffic.
Help with Bio-diesel for our school buses would be a good first step. I would like to see L.L. Bean fund the purchase of a few small hybrid school buses, or ones that run on natural gas, like the ones they funded in Acadia National Park.
For many years, the problem for Freeport schools has been our Town Council. They have cut the school budgets as recommended by the school board year after year, all the while saying Freeport has “great schools”, anyone who says otherwise is publicly chastised. They are mostly business friendly Republicans in a largely Democratic progressive town. We need to begin to fix that this November.
John “Jake” Jaques
[...] Putting on my marketing hat, I’m of the opinion that Freeport’s unique mix of national retailers and locally-owned shops is one of the critical competitive differentiators that will assure our future success. I wrote about this in more detail in my Think Different post. [...]
[...] As I’ve written before, our brand is whatever people perceive it to be, and while I don’t mean to fan the flames of negativity, it’s important to understand what others, particularly influential writers and bloggers, say about our town. Brutal, honest clarity about how your brand is perceived has to be the starting place for changing it. [...]
PT,
I think this is a great conversation to continue…I do think it is time to consider the genuine local community in Freeport. Enabling true community by encouraging independent businesses, widening our scope of bike and walking accessible destinations and making our public schools the highest priority will provide the framework for prosperity and true community.
The time has come for L L Bean to reconcile their ever widening impact on our town with substantial reparations in the form of deep pocketed support in all these community strengthening arenas.
We have so many resources in this town, so much opportunity, why are we forced to pinch pennies at our schools, why has our town center been sold to highest bidder, and why we must we continually bow down to the corporate presence which feels increasingly bullying and menacing? Where actually is our share of the money flowing through this town? How can we ensure that our children will have a town that they will recognize and that will want to return to?
As you see I have my own rants and questions and will be so happy to read yours and others as we forge ahead to a new future of Freeport. Many perspectives will help form a genuine conversation. Thanks for getting it started.
-Naomi C. O. Beal