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V O L . X X I V N O. X I V J U LY 9 , 2 0 1 8 18 R ob Reinken was at his latest development project a few weeks ago when he saw a woman out in front taking photos. He asked if he could help her. "She said, ' is was my dorm!,'" Reinken says. "So I showed her around." In a month, the woman could come back to live in Marland Hall on the former Nasson College campus if she wants to — Reinken is renovating the 1956 four- story dorm into 18 units of 55-plus housing. It's been a long road back since Nasson closed on May 1, 1983. Many of the buildings deteriorated, vacant for decades, as development plans fi zzled and died. ReinCorp's redevelopment of the former dorm is a milestone — it's the last building remaining on the core campus of the former liberal arts college to be redeveloped. Reinken owns six of the remaining buildings on the original campus. Several buildings, including Allen Hall, a dorm similar to Marland, and the former dining com- mons, were torn down years ago. ree "upper campus" buildings not owned by Reinken are vacant and have yet to be developed. It's not the same campus the Nasson alumna with the camera left behind. Like the village around it, it's grown into something diff erent after years of struggle. 'Nothing but a sandbox' When Nasson College declared bankruptcy in November 1982 and closed the following spring, it was the second of a brutal economic one-two punch for Springvale, which is part of the city of Sanford. A 1976 urban renewal project had levelled most of the two and three-story clapboard and brick downtown commercial buildings. When Nasson closed, the downtown around it was still pocked with vacant lots. e college, which was established in 1912 and at its height in the 1960s had 900 students, "was a wonder- ful asset to our community," says Harland Eastman, president of the Sanford/Springvale Historical Society. "It was obviously a large part of Springvale's prosperity." When the college closed in 1983, "people were sorry, shocked," he says. "Most of the people around in 1983 had never lived here at a time when it wasn't part of Springvale." e blow was felt deeply because, seven years before, "Springvale suff ered a disaster with far greater impact, urban renewal, with the delusion that as vacant land became available in Springvale, developers would rush in," he says. "For 20 years, it was nothing but a sandbox," he says. Adding to the pain, a series of possible development plans that didn't succeed kept the Nasson campus in limbo. It had a short revival as a quasi-college with a handful of students in one or two buildings, but the promise of more never developed. at eff ort and much of what happened for the next 15 years to the property was driven by a Massachusetts businessman, Edward P. Mattar III, who tied much of it up in lawsuits for years as buildings deteriorated. Marland Hall renovation As the Mattar era played out, Reinken, who moved to Sanford in 1986, began buying campus buildings as they became available. In 1988, he bought and renovated Alumni Hall, the campus' fi rst building, into 12 apartments. He developed adjacent 12,000-square-foot Brown Hall, the college's second building, into professional offi ce space in 1998. e offi ces of ReinCorp, as well as other tenants, have space there. In 1997 and 1998, he developed Folsom I and II, two two-story dorm buildings on the corner of Kirk and Grove streets a block northwest of the campus, into one and two-bedroom apartments. In 2003, he built a one-story building next to Marland Hall, where the dining commons once was, that house York County Career Center. e 40,000-square-foot science center, which dates to 1968, was redeveloped by Reinken into medical and professional offi ce space in 2010, with tenants Nasson Health Care and NorDx Maine Health. Marland Hall, which is approximately 22,000 square feet, is being transformed into 10 one-bed- room and eight two-bedroom senior apartments. Reinken began the project about a year ago and hopes to be ready for occupancy Aug. 1. Reinken was mostly building homes when the opportunity arose to buy Nasson property. He says his philosophy is to buy property to redevelop, so when home-building levels off , "I can keep every- body working." Reinken has owned Marland Hall since 2003, but the economy and other projects kept his plans for senior housing there on hold. "I don't have the capacity to do more than one property at a time," he says. He says it also took time to develop community trust after the beating it took in the years after Nasson closed. Marland Hall, a four-story brick dorm, once housed the college's Lion's Den coff ee shop in its basement. P H O T O / T I M G R E E N WAY Campus's second act Final Nasson College campus building redeveloped, 35 years after college closed B Y M A U R E E N M I L L I K E N F O C U S Rob Reinken, president of ReinCorp, in a two-bedroom apartment in Marland Hall on the former campus of Nasson College in Springvale.

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