Chamber renames annual awards, adds summer cookout-style celebration

The Bath-Brunswick-Topsham Regional Chamber of Commerce is trading its formal awards dinner for a summer gathering that it hopes will feel more open, more social and more in step with Maine in June. The chamber’s new Community Leadership Awards will be held Thursday, June 18, at Live Well Farm in Harpswell, with cornhole, live music and a condensed program of about 35 minutes.

Chamber executive director Cory King said the goal is to keep the attention on the winners while making the night feel less like a banquet and more like a community cookout. Live Well Farm, on Harpswell Neck Road, is described in wedding listings as a historic farmhouse-and-barn venue on about five acres, with one listing dating the property to roughly 185 years old. The setting gives the chamber a scenic backdrop for a recognition night that is meant to feel less formal than the traditional sit-down dinner.

The chamber said the awards will honor Tom Wright with the Harry C. Crooker Lifetime Achievement Award, Frank Connors as Citizen of the Year, Liza Rowland for Excellence in Entrepreneurship, Reed & Reed as Large Business of the Year, Now You’re Cooking as Small Business of the Year, Tedford Housing as Nonprofit of the Year, United Way of Mid Coast Maine for the President’s Award and The Brunswick Hotel for the Director’s Award. Reed & Reed’s company history traces the contractor to 1928, when Captain Josiah W. Reed and Carlton Day Reed started the business with a $2,000 investment, underscoring the long business lineage behind one of this year’s honorees. Tedford Housing, a Brunswick-based nonprofit, says it helps individuals and families move from homelessness to home, and its expanded Brunswick shelter has been reported to serve 24 adults and 10 families at a time, a boost of about 60% in capacity.

The shift follows a 2025 awards night that drew 115 attendees at St. John’s Community Center in Brunswick and honored eight business leaders. Tickets for that event were listed at $75 per attendee, and the chamber highlighted businesses including Fairwinds Farm and OystHERS Raw Bar & Bubbly. The new format keeps the chamber’s role as a marker of Midcoast business leadership, but places it in a looser setting that could broaden who shows up and how the region sees its own civic and economic leaders.