LOOKBACK: Celebrating Mainebiz's 20th anniversary

Photo/Jan Holder Jonathan Whitney founded BIZ, the predecessor to Mainebiz.

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By Lori Valigra

In this shortened work week leading up to Mainebiz’s 20th anniversary edition on Sept. 8, we will run an online feature in our Daily electronic edition to share what we think are some of the most interesting, influential and even amusing stories from our 20 years of issues starting in December 1994, as well as the broader context in which they took place. We hope they tingle some memories you’d like to share via Twitter, Facebook or on our website’s story comment sections. But for now, back to the beginning.

The first issue of BIZ, the predecessor to Mainebiz, hits the streets in December 1994, published by BIZ Publications in Portland. Jonathan Whitney and Eric Obery are the company’s principals, with Jonathan as publisher, and Shirley Jacks is editor of the then-monthly newspaper.

In reviewing the year’s key news stories and recent economic data, that first issue notes that manufacturing composes 20.3% of Maine's 1993 per capita income of $18,775. Private/public partnerships, created by Portland's Department of Economic Development in conjunction with the Downtown Portland Corp., spur $81 million in new development. For the first time, the city uses Tax Increment Financing to retain 450 employees and promote a $29.7 million investment in real estate, machinery and equipment for Nichols Portland to convince the company's headquarters to expand in the city.

Bath Iron Works is awarded a $10.2 million contract by the Navy to conduct engineering and design work for the Aegis guided missile destroyer program. Lewiston grabs a $1.8 million federal grant to revitalize the Bates Mill complex, a project that may ultimately create hundreds of jobs.

In general trends, a flight from Portland to Boston costs $84 one way. IDEXX Labs stock closes at $31.50 on Nov. 15. In technology, BIZ starts riding the Internet wave with the advent of the Web browser, which in 1993 caused a boom in electronic mail (by 1997 the volume of business email passed that of regular mail, according to Government Computer News). JPEG images start flooding the Web, Microsoft's Windows 95 is on the cusp of becoming a key computer operating system, and Wikis and Java catch on, thanks to the collaborative force of the web.

Nationally, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat are awarded the Nobel Prize, and a jury finds Heidi Fleiss guilty of running a call girl ring. The nation closes 1994 with $4.8 trillion in national debt, more than $296 billion in interest expense and a gross domestic product of close to $7.1 trillion under President Bill Clinton.

As we turn to 1995, here are some of that year’s top Mainebiz stories:

• Fishman unveils plan for Atlantic Portland

Fishman Realty Group proposes Atlantic Portland, an effort to combine three important Portland projects: the Gulf of Maine Aquarium, a convention and commerce center and a multimodal transportation center into one complex on the 24-acre Thompson's Point, according to the Jan.-Feb. 1995 issue of BIZ. Alan Fishman, president of the realty group, estimates Atlantic Portland could be built for $125 million in three to five years.

• Maine fast becoming mailbox society, demographer says

Maine is growing very slowly and aging in place, Harold Hodgkinson, director of the Center for Demographic Policy in Washington, D.C., told the Annual Meeting of the Maine Community Foundation. "While older people are nice," he says in the July 1995 issue of BIZ, "they don't care much about youth issues." He predicts the state's population will grow only 1.1% to 1.4 million in 2020. While Maine ranks 15th in the number of people over 65, he predicts that in 10 years it will rise to seventh. With increased numbers living on Social Security, he says, "Maine will become a mailbox economy, and that is money the state can't tax until it is spent."

• Maine can be tops in composite revolution

The Maine Composites Alliance, with more than 30 members in industry, research, universities and state government, forms to leverage R&D and manufacturing resources, the July 1995 issue of BIZ says. The alliance is the brainchild of Martin Grimnes, chairman and CEO of Brunswick Technologies Inc., which produces the world's widest composite reinforcing fabrics. Manufacturing composites is one of today's fastest-growing industries.

• Northern Ireland ready for trade

The outlook for American/Northern Ireland trade and investment continues to be good, says former Sen. George Mitchell, three months after a White House Conference opened the subject for exploration, but past differences in Ireland must be put aside.

• Portland Centre of the University of Maine

The Portland Centre of the University of Maine will open in December 1995 at 533 Congress Street to give the university a physical presence in Portland. It is designed to demonstrate and clarify the distinction between the respective missions of UMaine and the University of Southern Maine. The Centre will serve as a point of access for citizens, businesses and other institutions that might benefit from UMaine's programs, services and resources. It will feature a conference room and several offices that can be used as an operating base for faculty and staff from Orono who conduct business in southern Maine.

As 1995 comes to a close, BIZ ads tell about the state of technology. An IBM ThinkPad laptop with a 75 megahertz Pentium processor sells for $3,795, including an active matrix color screen, 8 megabytes of random access memory and a 540 megabyte hard disk drive at Computerama in South Portland. The store also is selling Apple Mac PowerBook laptops with a 500 megabyte hard disk drive for $1,845 to $3,495, with the latter having 16-bit stereo sound. You can rent an active matrix, liquid crystal display panel for your overhead projector presentations for $120 a day or $450 a week.

Separately, the BMW Z3 classic convertible came out in a limited edition. On the national front, President Clinton still heads the nation as of Dec. 31, the national debt rises 3.9% over the previous year to $4.99 trillion, interest expense rises to $332.4 billion and the GDP is up slightly to $7.40 trillion.