Mainebiz

V O L . X X X I I N O. V I I I A P R I L 2 0 , 2 0 2 6 24 I nside the bookstore at the foot of Ogunquit's Perkins Cove district, John Ranco rattles off names and bios of Maine authors like they're old friends. "She summers here," he says of novelist J. Courtney Sullivan, leaf- ing through "e Cliffs," a mystery set in the fictional seaside town of Awadapquit. en it's on to Anthony J. Pucci's "Murder on the Marginal Way," whose cover depicts Ogunquit's coastal cliff walk. "He lives in Ogunquit. Retired CEO. And it's actually a great book," Ranco says. "Isn't the Beachmere mentioned?" co-owner John Clancy chimes in about a nearby hotel. He and Ranco stock around 3,500 titles at Perkins Cove Bookstore, which they opened last year amid a cluster of bou- tique shops, eateries and galleries housed in refurbished fishing shacks. ough the small pedestrian loop is doable in minutes, visitors like to linger, lunch on benches, and stop to hoist the wooden footbridge for passing vessels. Currently open four days a week, the town's only bookstore — at one point there had been three — will ramp up to daily opera- tions in May when tourists start descending upon this 1,600-popu- lation town about 15 miles from Maine's southern edge. By summer, daily visitors can average in the tens of the thousands, especially on show nights at the Ogunquit Playhouse when traffic can snarl for miles along U.S. Route 1. at's not the case this Friday morning, when bright rays of sun- shine flirt with a crisp breeze like daffodils springing to life after win- ter. It's a fitting metaphor for busi- ness owners waxing hopeful in this gem of a place that feels far removed from harsh economic realities, gear- ing up for the busy season in one of Maine's most popular summer destinations. At an empty storefront across from the bookstore, workers are installing counters and equipment at a coming attraction called Compass Rose Coffee & Creamery that owner Vander Forbes aims to open before Memorial Day. e shiny gelato freezer display stands ready. "We still have some work to do — still some sheet rocking to do in the bathroom, plumbers more or less have everything ready for us, electri- cians hopefully can be finishing up by the end of the day Monday and hopefully getting the equipment in next week," says Forbes, a lobster sternman and fishing-charter opera- tor who previously worked in the food service industry. "I did the corporate thing for about 10 years and I had enough," he says. "I prefer this." Rob Haslam, a former merchan- diser for a book company who's buy- ing Perkins Cove Pottery Shop from bookstore owners Ranco and Clancy, has had a similar corporate-to-shop- keeper arc. "My life's moving north," says Haslam, who commutes from Portsmouth, N.H.,to run the store, a high-end gift shop bursting with treasures from octopuses under glass to a five-foot-tall wooden crane from Indonesia standing guard inside the front door. At Amy Kelly's TaleSpinStudio, multi-colored glass discs called ron- delles hang in the gallery's ocean-fac- ing windows and the walls are covered with mixed-media canvases featuring lobster tails and other nautical themes in bold blues and reds. Grabbing a sample of loose net- ting used as overlay on some of her works, the former lobsterwoman says, "I found this at a hardware store and it really fits the bill." Downstairs at a pop-up gallery that opened for the season on April 1, Rosanne Stavola is on duty for the Maine Art Collective. Stavola, who spent her career in environmental emergency response before reinventing herself as a com- mercial artist, says it took some experimentation to price her own paintings. She's a fan of the collective business model where artists sell each other's works. "We had a little sale today," she beams. e customer "saw a painting and it reminded them of their grand- children," she says. Like a real-life painting above the small boat harbor, the white wooden footbridge overlooks an idyllic scene that would have made for a far bet- ter Cabot Cove, the fictional Maine town featured in "Murder, She Wrote," a TV series filmed decades ago in Mendocino, Calif. ere's no Hollywood substi- tute for Perkins Cove, where Chris Street Sense by Renee Cordes, Mainebiz deputy editor, is a monthly column offering on-the-ground glimpses of small business life in Maine. Renee can be reached at rcordes @ mainebiz.biz Street Sense Pre-season's greetings Perkins Cove businesses spring to life on cusp of Oqunquit's busy season P H O T O / J I M N E U G E R P H O T O / J I M N E U G E R Chris Eager of Footbridge Lobster says the takeout hut sells a daily average of 400 lobster rolls in the summer. Vander Forbes supervises renovation work at Compass Rose Coffee & Creamery, aiming to open by Memorial Day.

• Cover