The Brewer Waterfront is seen in this November 2014 file photo.

BREWER, Maine — The city is preparing for phase two of its waterfront trail system, which will extend the 1,900-foot path from its current ending at the Chamberlain Bridge upriver to the Penobscot Bridge, and will add two new, stone chess tables to get things started.

“We expect construction [on the trail] to start in the fall and continue through the spring of next year and be completed in the fall of 2017,” D’arcy Main-Boyington, Brewer’s economic development director, said recently.

The Maine-made stone chess tables should be installed in the next couple of months.

Greater Bangor Association of Realtors issued Brewer a $2,000 grant, which was accepted at last week’s council meeting, to pay for the chess tables along the waterfront trail near the Children’s Garden, which is located behind Dead River.

Main-Boyington searched for a Maine company to build the tables and found Aron Buterbaugh, owner of Beachstone Sustainable Products in Portland.

Beachstone uses recycled glass that comes from three Washington County communities — Lubec, Machias and Eastport — and seashell products from other local sources to make concrete products, Buterbaugh said.

He said Monday that he has never made a stone chess table, but after coming up with the designs for Brewer, “I’d like to make a lot more.”

The chess board will be made with 2-inch square tiles colored in “Penobscot Blue” and “Katahdin Pearl” embedded in the concrete with seats that are topped with northern white cedar from Maine.

This first phase of the shorefront stabilization, a 600-linear-foot area in front of the High Tide restaurant and the old Bangor Box Factory on South Main Street, was completed in 2003. The paved trail starts at the old public works building on Hardy Street and extends north to the Chamberlain Bridge. Light poles were added in 2013.

The second phase of Brewer’s waterfront trail will connect that portion to Freedom Park, which is located just north of the Penobscot Bridge and features a statue of Joshua Chamberlain and of a slave emerging from an Underground Railroad tunnel, Main-Boyington said.

“We’ve already built the parking for that leg of the trail, on the end of Church Street,” Main-Boyington said. “Ten or 11 new businesses have moved into that two-block area in the last two years, since they changed that road.”

Betton Street was moved to align with Parker Street in 2010 in the Downtown Development District, which is a two-block area between Betton Street, Center Street and State Street.

“We’re starting to see a lot of payoff for those investments,” Main-Boyington said.

Eventually, the waterfront walking and bike path will link to the Veterans Remembrance Bridge downriver.

By Nok-Noi Ricker, BDN Staff
Posted Feb. 08, 2016, at 3:52 p.m.