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Hello, and thank you for wanting to learn more about Gateway Milbridge.

Gateway Milbridge is a non-profit 501c3 designated organization formed to assist with a downtown economic and cultural revitalization effort to benefit and engage the residents of Milbridge and our surrounding area through a variety of small and large community focused projects.

Our members are local volunteers, and a priority is to rebuild and reopen the Milbridge Theatre as a modern, full-service Theatre and Community Arts Center.

Our vision is for Milbridge to be an open, welcoming, stimulating, and engaged community that is healthy for our youth and encourages people to call Milbridge their home.   

• We built and operate a very successful outdoor stage, featuring programming free of charge.
• We initiated and currently maintain ongoing downtown beautification projects (town banners, industrial size flower planters, clean street program etc.)
• We take a leading role in organizing many community events such as
• Milbridge Days - a very large annual summer celebration,
• Christmas at the Marina and the Holiday Memory Tree Lighting,
• Other civic engagements, such as Live Game Show Nights, the Paddle Art Project, Lighthouse Art Project and Maine Bicentennial Art Projects for downtown Milbridge.  

When we first embarked on our downtown economic and cultural revitalization projects, we held community meetings and conducted a detailed community survey to gauge interest and objectives for various small and large projects and the specific concept of rebuilding and reopening the Milbridge Theatre as a modern, full-service community arts center in the heart of our downtown.

We received numerous responses reflecting overwhelming support for the organization’s project concepts and for seeing the theater rebuilt and expanded as a community arts center providing a flexible venue and much-needed community gathering space for a wide range of artistic, educational, and entertainment programming for families, our elderly, and our youth.

Rural areas like ours face difficult headwinds these days.  The economic and social redevelopment projects we are engaged in and our work in rebuilding and reopening the Milbridge Theatre as a full-service community arts center are critical to the region's economy and our residents' quality of life.  Our projects put emphasis not only on providing our region with a year-round venue for arts and educational programming, but also:

Driving economic vitality to our village center

Increasing student involvement in the arts

Offering student internships

Providing a social outlet for our large elderly population

Creating positive cross-cultural interaction opportunities for our growing Hispanic population

Enhancing civic pride/social health across our community.

The outdoor programming we're already providing has strong, tangible results. These results will expand much further by building a new, indoor facility offering expanded year-round artistic, cultural, and educational programming opportunities that are not weather dependent.  The rebuilt Theatre and Community Arts Center will benefit residents of diverse demographics in the rural Downeast region between Ellsworth and Lubec.  It's a key part of creating a healthy, vibrant, thriving community by providing much-needed educational programming, family/youth involvement, student internships, community gathering opportunities, enhanced civic pride, and cultural/economic stimulus.

We are pleased to be working in close cooperation with the Maine Association of Nonprofits, the Maine Community Foundation, and The Maine Philanthropy Center.  We sincerely appreciate their support!

You can get a quick overview of the Theatre and Community Arts Center project through our Project Fact Sheet and more information can be found in the Project Details section of our website.