This story first appeared in the Midcoast Update, a newsletter published every Tuesday and Friday morning. Sign up here to receive stories about the midcoast delivered to your inbox each week, along with our other newsletters.
The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay has big goals for its plants.
The gardens are now looking to build several new facilities that would total 42,000 square feet and eventually include a collection of all native Maine plant life.
Since opening in 2007, the gardens have drawn growing numbers of visitors to the midcoast — now more than 200,000 per year — with 300 acres of plants and grounds, as well as popular holiday light displays. But after that immense growth, the organization is now looking to focus more on its research capabilities.
Advertisement
The expansion, which still requires local approval, would include a 10,770-square-foot administrative and laboratory building, a head house, two greenhouses, a storage building, three hoop houses and several outdoor planting areas. The project would likely cost between $20 million and $25 million, with private grants helping to fund it. Construction could begin as soon as this spring.
Gretchen Ostherr, president and CEO of the gardens, said the expansion would help to pursue the gardens’ larger goal of inspiring connections between people and nature.
“A part of that design is really about teaching people about plants and about plant conservation, and just really trying to inspire a love of plants, especially in young people, but really kids of all ages,” Ostherr said.
While the organization currently does field research on plants, it does not have any labs where its scientists can work. Introducing a lab would allow the gardens to take more student researchers, use molecular biology and bring more educational value for visitors, according to Ostherr.
It would also allow the organization to begin storing more plants in a variety of ways. That would include a collection of seeds from native Maine plants that have been dried and frozen — or “cryo-preserved.” The researchers would also be able to expand their herbarium — which stores plants that have been pressed onto paper — from 20,000 to 100,000 specimens. Ostherr said DNA can be extracted from these specimens.
Advertisement
Ostherr said the goal is to prevent any Maine plants from going extinct. The herbarium would initially gather specimens of all native plants in the state. Eventually, the organization hopes to gather specimens for all of them in northern New England.
“At the end of the day, we’re all reliant on the plants for life,” Ostherr said. “You know that we will at least have the DNA material, either in seeds or in the herbarium or in cryo-preservation, so that if something happens to a plant, we would have the ability to still study it and potentially even restore it.”
The new facilities would be located behind the back parking lot of the gardens and wouldn’t be open to the public, Ostherr said. However, guests would be updated on the ongoing research by educational signs and classes.
Ostherr noted that the new facilities would be carbon neutral, using solar panels and electric heat pumps, as well as cisterns to collect and reuse rainwater.
Cory LaForge always liked a particular restaurant space on Main Street in Bucksport, which recently housed My Buddy’s Place and the Friar’s Brewhouse Tap Room before that.
So much so that, when it became available two months ago, he decided to open his own restaurant there.
Salsa Shack Maine, which opened in early December, is a physical location for the food truck business he’s operated out of Ellsworth and Orland for the last two years. The new spot carrying tacos, burritos and quesadillas adds to a growing restaurant scene in Bucksport and is meant to be a welcoming community space.
Advertisement
“I just loved the feeling of having a smaller restaurant,” LaForge said. “It feels more intimate. This place is designed where you can have a good conversation or talk to your customers, like they’re not just another number on a ticket.”
Salsa Shack Maine joins a growing number of new restaurants on Main Street in Bucksport. Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN
After growing up in the midcoast, LaForge eventually moved west to work in restaurants at ski areas, where he was exposed to more cultural diversity and new types of food – including tacos.
“It’s like all these different flavors that we’re not exposed to in Maine, so it’s like, I feel like I’ve been living a lie my whole life,” he said. “It was fun to bring all those things that I learned back here.”
When he realized his goal of opening a food truck in 2023 after returning to Maine, LaForge found the trailer he’d purchased on Facebook Marketplace was too small to fit anything but tortillas – and the Salsa Shack was born.
It opened at the Ellsworth Harbor Park in 2023 and operated out of the Orland Community Center in the winter. What started as an experiment took off in popularity and has been busy ever since.
Advertisement
LaForge calls his style “Maine-Mex:” a mix of authentic street tacos in a build-your-own format with different salsas and protein. Speciality salsas include corn and black bean, roasted poblano, pineapple jalapeno and mango Tajin.
The larger kitchen space in the new restaurant has allowed a menu expansion to include quesadillas, burritos and burrito bowls in addition to the tacos, nachos and taco salad bowls sold from the food truck. Regular specials are also on the menu.
Salsa Shack’s new Bucksport kitchen means room for owner Cory LaForge to experiment. He’s added quesadillas, burritos and burrito bowls to the menu alongside regular specials, such as this shrimp taco. Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN
More new menu items are likely ahead, according to LaForge, along with a beer and wine license and expanded hours in the spring.
The food truck will live on for now, too; he’s signed up for a few events in the coming months.
Starting Jan. 6, the restaurant will also offer a buy-two-get-one-free “Taco Tuesday” promotion.
“It’s a really fun vibe here, and I feel like everyone finds it very comfortable and easy to come in and order,” LaForge said, comparing the restaurant’s atmosphere to the television show Cheers. “Even if you have to sit down and wait a little while, we always have some fun conversations going on.”
Advertisement
So far, the welcome has been warm locally, he said, both from residents and the other new restaurant owners who help each other out. LaForge’s sole employee, Connor MacLeod, is also a familiar face from MacLeod’s Restaurant, which closed in March after 45 years on Main Street.
When it shut its doors, people in town weren’t sure where they would go, according to LaForge. But four new establishments opened in 2025, offering a range from Thai food to diner offerings.
“It’s kind of fun to see so [many] culinary changes,” he said.
The Salsa Shack is currently open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
The logos for streaming services Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus and Sling TV are pictured on a remote control on Aug. 13, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (Jenny Kane/Associated Press)
Maine consumers will soon see a new line on their monthly Netflix and Hulu bills. Starting Jan. 1, digital streaming services will be included in the state’s 5.5% sales tax.
The new charge — billed by the state as a way to level the playing field around how cable and satellite services and streaming services are taxed — is among a handful of tax changes coming in the new year.
The sales tax on adult-use cannabis will increase from 10% to 14%, also on Jan. 1. Taxes on cigarettes will increase $1.50 per pack — from $2 to $3.50 — on Jan. 5.
Advertisement
All three changes are part of the $320 million budget package lawmakers approved in June as an addition to the baseline $11.3 billion two-year budget passed in March.
Here are a few things to know about the streaming tax:
1. Why is this new tax taking effect?
Taxes on streaming services have been a long time coming in Maine. Former Republican Gov. Paul LePage proposed the idea in 2017, and it was pitched by Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, in 2020 and 2024. The idea was rejected all three times — until this year.
State officials said last spring the change creates fairness in the sales tax as streaming services become more popular and ubiquitous. It’s also expected to generate new revenue for the state.
Advertisement
2. What services are impacted?
Currently, music and movies that are purchased and downloaded from a website are subject to sales tax, but that same music and those same movies are not taxed when streamed online.
The new changes add sales tax to monthly subscriptions for movie, television and audio streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, Spotify and Pandora. Podcasts and ringtones or other sound recordings are also included.
3. How much is it likely to cost you?
The new tax would add less than $1 to a standard Netflix subscription without ads priced at $17.99 per month. An $89.99 Hulu live television subscription would increase by about $5 per month.
Advertisement
Beginning Jan. 1, providers will be required to state the amount of sales tax on customers’ receipts or state that their price includes Maine sales tax.
4. How much new revenue is this generating for the state?
The digital streaming tax is expected to bring in $5 million in new revenue in fiscal year 2026, which ends June 30. After that, it’s projected to bring in $12.5 million annually, with that figure expected to increase to $14.3 million by 2029.
The tax increase on cigarettes, which also includes an equivalent hike on other tobacco products, is expected to boost state revenues by about $75 million in the first year.
The cannabis sales tax increase, meanwhile, will be offset in part by a reduction in cannabis excise taxes, which are paid by cultivation facilities on transfers to manufacturers or retailers. The net increase in state revenue will be about $3.9 million in the first full year, the state projects.
Cars and trucks travel northbound along the Maine Turnpike in Arundel through a messy wintry mix on Feb. 4, 2022. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)
A wintry mix is forecasted to come down on Maine starting in the early hours of Monday morning.
A mix of sleet and snow is expected to start falling around 1 a.m. Monday in the Portland area and closer to 3 a.m. in the Lewiston area. The mix will likely transition to freezing rain on Monday morning in time for the morning commute, making roads icy, according to the National Weather Service in Gray.
“That’s going to make conditions not ideal for traveling,” said Stephen Baron, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service.
Advertisement
As temperatures inch above 32 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday afternoon, the freezing rain is forecasted to transition to regular rain. Ice on the roads will start to melt over the afternoon as well.
The forecast for the rest of the week is fairly clear as of now. The only other potential precipitation is on Wednesday, with a festive snowfall on New Year’s Eve “around the countdown,” said Baron.
Advertisement
Sophie is a community reporter for Cumberland, Yarmouth, North Yarmouth and Falmouth and previously reported for the Forecaster. Her memories of briefly living on Mount Desert Island as a child drew her…
More by Sophie Burchell
