Damariscotta Select Board member Jim Cosgrove discusses commercial development during a board meeting in May 2017. Cosgrove served three years on the select board, winning the seat as a write-in candidate in 2014. (LCN file)
Jim Cosgrove didn’t really want to move to Maine in 1987 and once he did, he certainly never expected to stay.
Born in Salem, Mass. and raised in Newton, Cosgrove got a taste of the state when he was a student at St. Joseph’s College of Maine in Standish, but at heart he was a city guy with big city dreams when his employer asked him to take over a troubled sales office.
“I was in line to go someplace else,” Cosgrove, of Damariscotta, said. “I was supposed to get a promotion and I thought we’re going to New York City, Chicago, something exciting and everything. They said, ‘Jim, we need you to go up to Maine’ … They said ‘You go there; it’s a three-year assignment. You get this done, you get this straightened out, and we’ll get you out of that.’”
Nearly 40 years later, Cosgrove said nobody is more surprised than he is at how his life has gone.
“It’s funny where life leads you,” he said. “I came here on a three-year assignment, thoroughly intending to be gone in three years and now this is home. Damariscotta has become home.”
It wasn’t just that the community proved to be ideal for raising a family, Cosgrove said. The small town, know-your-neighbor intimacy created opportunities he may not have been afforded otherwise. Those opportunities provided him with an on-the-job education in public policy and allowed Cosgrove to work hand in hand with some of Lincoln County’s brightest, most talented people.
“I feel like by being here, I got a chance to do a lot of things I might not have gotten to do in a bigger city,” he said. “When I was on the board at the hospital, health care now is like one of the defining problems of our time and I got a chance to be at the table for nine years and learn about that. I feel privileged to have done all that. Really it’s been great.”
Great, however, was not initial impression Jim and his wife, Linda, had when they first arrived in Lincoln County, settling into a home in Nobleboro. Although he may be better known locally today as a Realtor, in 1987 Jim Cosgrove was a regional manager for RJR Nabisco, overseeing sales for the Midcoast region and training Nabisco’s sales force for the entire state.
According to Cosgrove, the first couple of months were challenging as the transition from Boston to Damariscotta did provide for a certain amount of culture shock.
“The first Friday night we’re here, I said to my neighbor, ‘It’s Friday night. We usually go for pizza,’” Cosgrove said. “’Where do you go for pizza?’ He said Maritime Farms. I said ‘You go to the gas station for pizza?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, they got fresh dough.’ So I go to Maritime Farms and say ‘You got fresh dough here?’ ‘Yes,’ she goes, ‘it comes from Portland every Monday.”
Over time the area began to work its charms, to the point where after the first three-year assignment was up, Cosgrove turned down the promised transfer and asked for a second three-year posting in Maine.
“Like the first six months, it’s like we got to get out of here. We got to get out of here,” he said. “This is not for us, and time went on, and all of a sudden, about a year later, on a freezing cold day, I was running in to get a cup of coffee. It’s now Mr. Mike’s. It used to be something different. I came out with my coffee and I realized I had left my car running. You never did that where I came from. You didn’t even leave it unlocked!”
During his second three-year assignment Cosgrove was laid off in 1993, a far-ranging casualty of the leveraged buyout of Nabisco detailed in the 1989 book “Barbarians at the Gate.” Cosgrove drove to Portland for the meeting thinking he was getting a promotion, only to be told he was out of a job, but he would be allowed to drive the company car for another week.
“’Black Friday,’ we called it,” he said. “Fifteen hundred of us lost our jobs that day. I was halfway to a pension.”
At that time, the Cosgroves knew they wanted to raise their family in Lincoln County. They had adopted their first child, Natasha, and were in the process of adopting their second, Alex, when Jim Cosgrove was laid off. Needing a job, Cosgrove carefully considered his options. Then he took his background in sales and management, combined it with a passing interest in real estate, and launched his career as a realtor by cold calling Sigrid Sproul, the Realtor who had sold the Cosgroves their first home in the area.
Sproul wasn’t hiring at the time, but she and her business partner, Linda Bruner, gave Cosgrove an opportunity and he made the most of it, he said. Obtaining his real estate license in 1995, Cosgrove joined the team at ERA Marilyn McLoon in Damariscotta. The first two years were a little rough, he said, but he stuck with it and little by little business improved.
Damariscotta resident Jim Cosgrove arrived in Lincoln County in 1987, expecting a brief stop in a corporate career. In the years since he made a career in real estate, served in elective office, and raised a family. (Sherwood Olin photo)
He was established enough to be Lincoln County Realtor of the Year in 1999 and to serve a term as president of the Lincoln County Board of Realtors. The following year he joined Newcastle Square Realty – now Newcastle Realty – as a manager and minority partner. In 2015 he joined Keller Williams Realty, ultimately opening the company’s Lincoln County office, at 65 Main St. in Damariscotta.
The move to Newcastle Square Realty coincided with the Cosgroves move from Nobleboro to Damariscotta in 2000, a change they made in part to enroll their children in Great Salt Bay Community School. The move also launched Cosgrove into Damariscotta’s public service sector.
In 2001, Damariscotta School Committee member Oliver Libby was selling his home and agreed to let Cosgrove handle the listing if Cosgrove agreed to fill Libby’s seat on the school committee, which included membership on the Great Salt Bay School Committee. That started a nine-year tenure representing Damariscotta’s students. Cosgrove, a lifelong conservative, said the experience was illuminating and challenged his preconceived notions of public education.
The fact is, Cosgrove said, schools are charged with a lot more than just teaching. For many students, a school meal might be the only food they get in a day. For some, the school nurse is the only kind of medical attention they receive.
“I learned so much, you know, negotiating teacher contracts, learning what goes on and why things are the way they are,” Cosgrove said. “I came to have a completely different appreciation for what it is we ask public schools to do in this country. They are not just places where you go learn ABC, 1,2,3,4. They are public service delivery agencies.”
Following his service on the school committee in 2010, Cosgrove was elected as a write-in candidate to Damariscotta Select Board in 2014. Finishing his term in 2017, Cosgrove declined to run for reelection as he began to wind down some of his public commitments, which included 20 years of active membership with the Rotary Club of Damariscotta-Newcastle. Cosgrove said it was time for a reordering of priorities.
These days, Cosgrove serves on the Damariscotta Appeals Board and he works as needed as a freelance public meeting moderator. Cosgrove said he enjoys the process of public meetings. After years of actually serving on board and having vested interest in the proceedings, it is nice to focus on being the moderator, whose only responsibility is to conduct the meeting fairly.
Beginning late in the 2010s the Cosgroves rented various properties in the Florida before buying a property on the outskirts of Ocala. These days Linda Cosgrove spends the bulk of her winters in Florida, while Jim Cosgrove commutes back and forth as business requires.
“‘I’m doing some real estate, and I’m mentoring a lot of the younger people here,” he said. “It’s very rewarding, actually … It’s fun bringing those people along.”
Cosgrove said he is still not comfortable embracing the idea of a retiree’s lifestyle, but he does enjoy the lifestyle when he is in Florida. Cosgrove’s Florida residence is in a 55-plus community, nestled between two golf courses and served by five swimming pools.
“I never saw myself doing something like this,” Cosgrove said. “There’s a bunch of people from Maine there. (I) play golf every day, then go to the pool, and then socialize. It’s like, at first, I can’t believe I’m doing this, and then I was like, ‘Well this isn’t so bad.’”
With a 70th birthday coming into view, properties in Damariscotta and Florida, a team of young professionals to mentor and few more real estate deals to make, Cosgrove said he surprised and pleased to have found home in Damariscotta. When the time comes to meet his maker, Cosgrove said he hopes his ashes will be scattered locally.
“My wife and I have talked about it,” he said “It’s like Florida is fun. It’s a nice thing to do for a couple of years, and we’ll probably do that for a while longer, but this is where I want to be.”
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