Gov. Baldacci announces redevelopment plans for G-P mill

            September 28, 2006

After months of uncertainty regarding the future of the G-P mill in Old Town, Governor Baldacci has announced that the facility will be turned into a state of the art “energy facility” with at least four or five different manufacturers employing 1000-plus workers. The governor made the announcement at a press conference held at the Old Town Public Library early Monday morning.

            “You don’t need a cup of coffee to get excited this morning,” he said. “This transformation will bring the mill into the twenty-first century. One door has closed, but another one has opened.”

            The governor added that the reuse ties in with research being done at the University of Maine and the goal of energy dependence.

            “Power generated on the site will be sold behind the gate to other industries that will co-locate at the facility, and these companies will also add manufacturing jobs,” he said. “The outlook for the Old Town mill is bright.”

            Sale negotiations for the G-P mill have been ongoing ever since the facility closed its doors last March. In the following months, it was widely believed that Cascades, Inc., a company based in Montreal was poised to become the new owner of the mill. But Monday’s announcement made clear that Cascades, Inc. will not be part of the mill’s future. Instead, four companies that are not producers of pulp or paper will begin operations at the mill site within the next few weeks. The four companies are comprised of Red Shield, which will operate the mill’s bio-mass boiler to produce electricity, Tamarack Energy, a New England-based company that will provide the engineering services needed for operation of the bio-mass boiler, Hallowell International, L.L.C., a low-temperature heat manufacturer and distributor based in Bangor, and Lamtec, Inc., makers of pressure-sensitive labels based in Portland.

            Representatives from three of the companies were present for the governor’s announcement Monday. When asked by one reporter whether the companies’ participation in the redevelopment process was a matter of “default” because the deal with Cascades, Inc. had fallen through, --, spokesman for Lamtec, replied that his company could have taken their operation anywhere but had chosen to bring it to Old Town.

            “These companies are here because they know that Old Town has an incredible workforce,” Gov. Baldacci said.

            He added that diversification of the mill was a “long-term economic solution” that would, in turn, help to stabilize the work situation in the long-term as well. He said that he intended to provide a “seamless” transition in getting former G-P employees back to work. The new companies have promised to offer jobs to the displaced mill workers before advertising them to the public. The mill workers who take those jobs will receive training funded in part with $50.000 from the Governor’s Initiative Fund.

            “This marks the first time that that a closed pulp and paper mill in Maine has been reused for a state-of-the-art production that will transition employment opportunities and create new industry,” the governor said.

            Old Town city manager Peggy Daigle called the move “a positive step toward the future” for workers and their families. She said that the new companies involved with the redevelopment of the mill were coming into “a community that is pro-active.”

            “We’ve been working diligently for the last two years to diversify the economy, to steer somewhat away from paper,” she said. “But there are many resources to put into new economic opportunities. We’re developing out at the airport, on Stillwater Avenue. We’re taking some first positive steps toward the future.”

            In response to some reporters’ queries about possible environmental hazards that the new operations could pose, Ed Paslosky, spokesman for Red Shield, said that his company intended to create a full-service, environmentally sound energy park. A recent $10.35 million grant received by the University of Maine will be used to research ways in which wood by-products can be used to make over 30 plastics and chemicals now made exclusively with oil. Research is also being done on alternative ways to use fiber instead of burning it with black liquid.

            Some PACE 80 union members who attended the press conference said afterward that they were excited about the future of the mill, but that they were waiting to see how the actual mechanics of the redevelopment played out.

            “It’d be good to work for a smaller company that knows who I am personally,” one member said. “The time is right to go back to smaller companies and more family-oriented businesses. “

            Jim Bosse, a 41-year mill veteran, said that he wouldn’t mind learning a new job.

            “After working at the same job for forty-one years, I was tired of it,” he said. “I’m ready for something new.”

            Bosse went on to say that he and other returning workers knew they would lose some of the pay and benefits that went with their old jobs, but at this point were more concerned about having insurance coverage and the fact that “the real world has no jobs.”

            One point on which there was unanimous agreement among the union members was the role that Gov. Baldacci had played in bringing the mill redevelopment to fruition.

            “Baldacci was the lynchpin in this whole thing,” Bosse said. “I can’t think of any other governor who would have done even half as much as he’s done.”

            In a private interview following Monday’s press conference, Gov. Baldacci told the Times that he saw the G-P mill shutdown as something that could not be separated from the community in which it happened.

            “It’s not as if the mill can close and people just go on with their lives,” he said. “It affects everything around it, the entire community, families, businesses. It’s a huge part of who and what people are.”

            He also said that the transformation of the G-P mill into a multi-manufacturer facility would put Old Town into the eye of the whole country.

            “Everyone’s going to be watching to see how we did this,” he said. “This is the first time anything like this has been done. It’s a prototype for what can be done in situations like this around the country.”

            Looking back over the last six months of negotiations with G-P, the governor said that the most difficult part had been working so hard behind the scenes for so long.

            “Would other governors have done as much or worked so hard to make this happen? I don’t know. Probably not. But this was about the people of Old Town, not just the mill. The people are what make Old Town what it is, and I wasn’t going to let them down.”