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2024 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

wednesday, JUne 5

Beer Garden

Join Build Maine for Socializing and fun!

Held at the location of the future riverfront promenade, the festivities will take place outside, overlooking the Kennebec River. Enjoy food and drink (pay your own), see old friends and meet new friends, test your trivia skills, and chat with long lost friends and colleagues. Welcome to all! In the event of rain, join us under the tent in the parking lot of 185 Water Street.

 

THURSDAY, JUNE 6

Jake Bittle

Staff Writer | Grist

Over the next fifty years, millions of Americans will be caught up in this churn of displacement, forced inland and northward in what will be the largest migration in our country’s history. In other words, they’ll be coming to Maine. Jake Bittle is a staff writer at Grist, where he covers climate change. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s, New York Magazine, The New Republic, and numerous other publications. He is the author of The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. Join us to learn more about the extent to which climate mitration will impact Maine, and why planning will become an increasingly necessary activity to protect what we love most about our State.


 

LUNCH TOURS

TOUR: SPINNING MILL REDEVELOPMENT

Tour will depart from front entrance of the Newspaper Building, 185 Water Street

Join us for a tour of the Spinning Mill, which last year was the vacant undeveloped site of the 2022 Build Maine conference. Work is almost completed to transform this old mill into a mill of apartments and lodging. Learn about the financing assembled to pull off this project and generate significant value for downtown Skowhegan. Also learn about the other challenges faced during the process.

TOUR: MAINE GRAINS GRISTMILL TOUR

Meet at Miller’s Table at Maine Grains for lunch. Tour will depart from there.

Maine Grains is housed in the historic former Somerset County Jail building, which is also the home of the Miller’s Table Café, Crooked Face Creamery, Happyknits yarn shop, WXNZ community radio & the weekly Skowhegan Farmer’s Market. The mill has been an engine of entrepreneurship and resides in the heart of historic downtown Skowhegan. During the tour you will learn about the unique history of Maine Grains, the process of transforming a jail into a mill, how stone milled flour is made and what they are hoping to accomplish in the years to come.