![Downtown Skowhegan welcomes Maine Grains as new food-focused community hub Downtown Skowhegan welcomes Maine Grains as new food-focused community hub](https://i0.wp.com/www.mainebiz.biz/sites/default/files/indesign-import/images/052724_ME-Grains_01_8439_opt.jpg?w=1200&resize=1200,0&ssl=1)
The Maine Grains building, located in the heart of Skowhegan in the 14,000-square-foot former Somerset County Jail, has been converted into a business center of sorts in recent years.
The ground floor has Miller’s Table at Maine Grains coffee shop, with a wood-burning pizza oven, seating, and display cases filled with brownies, loaves of bread, and cookies. There is a Maine Grains retail store, with cookbooks, cookware and souvenirs. Also downstairs, artisan cheesemaker Crooked Face Creamery has a cheese-making operation and retail store.
On the upper floors there is a radio station and an extensive collection of cookbooks. A related company, Canaan-based Good Crust, makes pizza dough with Maine Grains flour. And, of course, the building houses the mill that processes and packages the grains.
The person behind Maine Grains is CEO Amber Lambke, who has also been a catalyst for related startups. (Her twin sister, Heather Kerner, is the owner of Good Crust.)
To source organic and heritage grains, Maine Grains works with 20 distributors and 45 farmers. Maine Grains, co-founded in 2012 by Lambke and Michael Scholz, serves bakers, brewers, chefs and consumers with fresh, organic and heirloom grains sourced from Maine farmers.
Photo / Field Fred
A hopper full of ground grain Maine Grains in Skowhegan.
The business was launched with the aim of helping revitalize the local economy and help connect farmers, millers and bakers. Lambke said that while you could buy local produce, meats and cheeses, there were no local grain options.
“I was volunteering at our local farmers market when I realized that local grains were missing from the conversations,” Lambke says.
“Farmers were growing ‘cover crops’ like rye and oats, but they didn’t see much of a market for them,” he adds. “There were no food markets for these crops. We needed machinery to remove weed seeds; Quality was a problem.
“We saw the food movement change things. Farmers’ markets have rules that food must be produced or grown locally, but bakers were allowed to sell bread (without locally sourced grains). There was an awakening among the movement food”.
Today, Maine Grains has about 20 employees and annual revenues of $2.3 million.
Maine Grains and Lambke have been key drivers in the growth of Skowhegan, population 8,603, which is experiencing changes in its downtown and along the Kennebec River.
The proposed farmers market
Lambke is about to launch what could be its biggest project yet: developing an adjacent lot that will allow for expanded Maine Grains operations.
Lambke proposes building a building on the vacant lot next door that could house the Skowhegan Farmers Market; Maine Grains Administrative Offices; space to blend and package grains for value-added products; online order fulfillment; and rental of spaces for entrepreneurs.
It would also have an expanded dry goods store with a demonstration area and a large clubroom to host the winter farmers market and community gatherings.
Maine Grains acquired the vacant land in 2020 under an agreement with the city to use it in a mutually beneficial manner.
Lambke said the city would like to see a project that fits with the Maine Grains campus, which has inspired much entrepreneurship, including food and agricultural entrepreneurship.
The project also encourages foot traffic and retail shopping downtown as part of a broader design toward a river park development underway in Kennebec.
Building community
Amy Rowbottom, owner of Crooked Face Creamery, started her business at the farmers market and operated there before moving her operations to the Maine Grains building.
“The farmers market traffic helps us when they’re here and in the winter when they come up the street to the greenhouse, and we miss them,” Rowbottom says.
“It gets pretty quiet here when the farmers market moves. I’m excited to have that space for farmers. We work so closely together that having them here all year round will be fantastic.
“I hope the new building brings more community and more collaboration. “We all collaborate a lot,” she continues. “We can have even more startups because I know Amber is thinking about more commercial space for people to open businesses. “I think the most important thing is to make downtown Skowhegan an attraction for people who come.”
Lambke says the farmers market plays an important role.
“We’ll save space in that building to solve a long-standing problem for the Skowhegan Farmers Market: what to do in the winter,” Lambke says. “For the past several years, the Farmers Market has met weekly on our lot from April to November. But, during the winter months, they go outside and go into a greenhouse. “We are all feeling the loss of the market during this time and customers are lost when it moves off-site.”
She says the Farmers Market plays a vital role in addressing food insecurity in the region.
“We serve many SNKeynote USA users at our Farmers’ Market. “Skowhegan is a town where 51% of our population qualifies for SNKeynote USA,” she says, referring to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. “We have a strong (SNKeynote USA electronic benefit transfer) sales program at the farmers market, as well as nutritional incentives.”
More about the project
Over the past four years, the expansion project has overcome its challenges and is now in its third design phase, weathering the pandemic, inflation and increases in construction costs.
“For version two of the building, we got a quote of $5 million for construction,” Lambke says. “At the time, that was a little higher than we expected, so we waited a year and tried to remove some costs from the design. COVID construction prices continued to rise, so even removing some of the more expensive pieces, the quote a year later was back to $7.5 million.
“We hired our bank, we got an appraisal loan for that building, and that $7.5 million building was going to be appraised at $2.5 million once it was built,” he continued. “In my 20 years of living here, the only new building I’ve seen built downtown, besides the chain stores, is the pharmacy.”
She cites the region’s “chronic disinvestment” and investment in brick-and-mortar stores or malls.
The difference between the estimated construction cost and the appraised value “is just enormous,” Lambke says. “You need to fill that gap another way, and that’s philanthropic cash flow, and putting pressure on a growing business with cash flow is difficult.”
Financing for the project.
In 2022, the USDA awarded Lambke a $200,000 Healthy Foods Financing Initiative grant. An anonymous donor also contributed money to help drive the planning stages of the project.
Lambke told Mainebiz he is working to secure more funding this year. She currently has several grant applications for multiple pieces of this vision.
“The Healthy Food Financing Initiative grant is helping us with all pre-construction engineering, architectural, mechanical and geotechnical services that are necessary to prepare for construction. We just signed a contract with Sheridan Construction (based in Fairfield) to help us with the design and development,” says Lambke.
“Those are the next steps as we continue to raise funds.”
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