LEWISTON — U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, toured the city’s emerging riverfront area Tuesday during a Thanksgiving break from Congress to reflect on the role federal funds can play in redeveloping a local economy.

Walking with Lewiston Mayor Robert Macdonald, City Administrator Ed Barrett and the top officials in the city’s public works, planning and economic development departments, Collins took a short foot tour to review recent developments in and around Simard-Payne Memorial Park as part of the city’s overall riverfront development plan.

Collins said the comprehensive approach to the development of the park area and the riverfront was “very impressive and unusual.”

Lincoln Jeffers, Lewiston’s director of community and economic development, said the federal support, along with the backing of the City Council and mayor, helped launch a vision for the riverfront and a plan that’s not just sitting on a shelf collecting dust but is being implemented.

“It’s allowed us to pull all the pieces together,” Jeffers said.

The key to much of the development was federal grants secured by Collins and the rest of Maine’s Congressional delegation that have provided resources for design and planning but have also triggered state, local and private investment in the once-maligned riverfront area of the city.

“This also demonstrates how important federal programs can be as a catalyst to help support state and local efforts as well as stimulating private investments,” Collins said. “It takes everything.”

She said Lewiston had become an example of what can be done in a once-industrial city that was transitioning its economy. She said federal, state and local investments in housing were also critical to ongoing redevelopment efforts.  

Federal tax credits that are made available for low- and mixed-income housing developments, as well as those aimed at historic preservation, were all parts of the equation that Collins said she supports, “so that these beautiful old buildings are not razed when they can be redeveloped into mixed-use housing and commercial establishments. These old mills that are so important to the history of this region are now part of the region’s future.”