April 26, 2004
After MBNA | Camden residents debate options for new business development as the credit card giant pulls out of town
By Sean Donahue
The grand re-opening of The Owl & Turtle Bookshop on April 17 commemorated more than just a successful move across Camden. For owner Dr. Paul Lerner, it marked the store's second chance at life. Last fall, after a dispute with his previous landlord left him struggling to find a new spot in downtown Camden, Lerner was convinced he would have to close the 30-year-old bookstore. Then MBNA, the Delaware-based credit card company, emerged as The Owl & Turtle's unique benefactor, just as it has for many institutions in this midcoast town.
In October, MBNA approached Lerner with a proposition: The company had more real estate in town than it needed, and executives wanted to turn portions of its Knox Mill facility into a new, mixed-use development. Lerner's store was the kind of anchor tenant they said they needed to give the new retail zone drawing power, and the company offered The Owl & Turtle a landmark, 2,800-square-foot storefront on the corner of Washington and Mechanic streets. "The company was so generous with us in terms of offering us the space and really wanting us there," says Lerner, who credits MBNA with saving his store.
Lerner had no idea at the time, but his agreement with MBNA signaled the start of a process that eventually will result in a literal and symbolic re-ordering of Camden's downtown business district and community identity. Last month, MBNA announced it would pull out of Camden altogether, moving its 360 workers there to its Rockland and Belfast offices and marketing its Knox Mill office complex ˆ about 140,000 sq. ft. in all ˆ to new tenants. The company, which had been slowly decreasing the number of workers in Camden for the last few years, said the consolidation will help it operate more efficiently.
Moving vans arrived shortly after the announcement, and by April 15 MBNA was no longer operating in the town where, in 1993, it started building a Maine presence that's now 3,700 workers strong.
Given MBNA's high profile and generally positive reputation in town, there's naturally been some trepidation in the community about facing life after MBNA. But rather than treating MBNA's departure as a crisis, most residents and business owners see a tremendous opportunity for the town. It's a clean break that gives Camden the chance to create a new plan for economic and community development, one that targets new markets and builds on the prosperity the town already enjoys, thanks to MBNA's decade-long residency and a thriving seasonal tourism business. "This is a great opportunity for the community to put together a strategic plan that's in the best interest of the region," says Andy McPherson, executive director of the Camden-Rockport-Lincolnville Chamber of Commerce, who is trying to organize a regional discussion process to define that plan. "We're trying to take a longer view: What's the community going to look like five years or 10 years from now?"
MBNA's Knox Mill facility provides the foundation for many of these nebulous plans. The meticulously restored complex ˆ made up of the former mill and surrounding buildings, which are referred to collectively as the Knox Mill Center ˆ is a rarity in the region, offering flexible, class-A office space, state-of-the-art telecommunications capabilities, ample parking and facilities like a cafeteria. It's essentially a blank screen on which residents can project any number of options: a new retail and restaurant zone; a home for high-skilled, high-paying jobs offered by high-tech corporations; additional space for government or nonprofit offices; art studios; and even housing.
The catch is that the Knox Mill is still MBNA's private property, and the company is handling the marketing and leasing of the space itself. (For now, it appears MBNA has no intention of selling the property, even though the company recently sold its Ducktrap Motel in Lincolnville and has a few other Maine properties on the market.) And although Andy McPherson says he has asked MBNA if it would consider suggestions on re-use of the space and potential tenants, he admits that so far the company has not said much publicly about its strategy for marketing the mill. Likewise, MBNA would not return repeated phone calls from Mainebiz asking for comment on its plans for the Knox Mill.
Boosting the conference biz
Camden's retailers are one group attempting to direct, at least to a small degree, the direction Camden will take in the post-MBNA era. In the immediate term, most retailers expect business to slow down slightly without MBNA's 360 employees working around the corner. "There's just an energy that 300 people bring to town, and I can't imagine we won't notice at least some change," says Barrie Pribyl, owner of ABCD Books and co-president of the Camden Downtown Business Group.
There's also likely to be more of the small-scale reshuffling that's already occurred, as existing businesses move from their current locations to bigger or better spaces that once housed part of MBNA's sprawling operations. Along with The Owl & Turtle, Know Technology recently jumped a few blocks across town to take an open spot in the Knox Mill facility. Andy McPherson and downtown merchants like Paul Lerner want to see as few of those lateral moves as possible, however. They're hoping that MBNA's vacancy results in a net gain of businesses ˆ whether they're retailers, restaurants or corporations ˆ that make the area around Knox Mill thrive. And they know that having enough room within MBNA's clean, modern facilities will be a crucial factor in convincing potential business migrants to come to Camden.
But rather than focusing on who those new businesses might be, the Camden Downtown Business Group instead is considering strategies it can adopt to help all Camden retailers ˆ old and new ˆ stay busy all year. A higher percentage of businesses than usual seemed to shut down last winter, say some locals, and retailers don't want to see that trend gaining strength. In recent months, the group's focus has been on ways to attract small conferences to town outside of the summer high season. Local retailers, restaurateurs and innkeepers have seen the impact that the annual Camden Conference, a global affairs and foreign policy convention held in town every February since 1988, and Pop!Tech, a science, technology and culture conference founded in the late 90s, have had on the town during slower seasons.
A few more such events accommodating between 60 and 400 attendees, they figure, will help boost business during the slow winter months. "The town feels really good during Pop!Tech and the Camden Conference. We think it makes sense to find a market that helps us offset the seasonality of our business but is respectful of town residents," says Pribyl. "We want to be more proactive about attracting these small conferences."
By sticking with small conferences, Pribyl says the town can use existing infrastructure like the Camden Opera House and local restaurants and inns, and not have to worry about investing money to build a dedicated conference center. But the group is also wondering ˆ though it hasn't asked MBNA officials directly ˆ whether the vacant space at Knox Mill offers possible conference-related uses, such as rooms for breakout sessions and smaller meetings, that could make Camden an even more attractive destination for conference planners. For now, though, the group is still trying to determine exactly how to go about boosting its conference business, such as establishing a funding mechanism to hire someone part-time to market the town as a conference destination.
The "Creative Quadrangle"
The Downtown Business Group's focus on boosting conference activity may end up as one component of the comprehensive, forward-looking plan for broader regional development that McPherson hopes to develop. For his part, McPherson believes the centerpiece of such a plan should include courting a new set of corporate tenants to fill MBNA's former home and build on the firm's legacy of economic transformation. "My preference is to tap into the intellectual capital market, those businesses like biotech or research and development that are based on ideas or concepts and not manufactured products or services," says McPherson. "We want year-round, stable, high-paying companies that could be doing business anywhere in the world to come here."
Camden's natural setting, cultural offerings and small town feel have long attracted out-of-staters looking for an alternative to urban life, says McPherson. Now, with MBNA's high-quality office space available, the town has the final piece necessary to attract entire companies looking for that environment. Given Camden's high concentration of recent transplants and summer residents with connections to the high-technology or intellectual capital-intensive industries ˆ McPherson used to run a biomedical company in Seattle during the 1990s, and part-time residents and Pop!Tech founders Bob Metcalfe and John Sculley used to run 3Com and Apple Computer, respectively ˆ McPherson envisions a word-of-mouth campaign in which he and others call friends and colleagues in those industries to see who might be interested in moving to town. Then, they could encourage those interested parties to contact MBNA or pass the leads along to the company themselves.
Filling MBNA's space would be only part of the regional strategy that McPherson would like to see developed, however. He's envisioning a plan that also encompasses the recent inclusion of the decaying Apollo Tannery site and other area locations in a new Pine Tree Zone. He'd like to weigh the Downtown Business Group's interest in conferences alongside other ideas floating around town, such as attracting some kind of educational institution or large, national nonprofit group, or creating a new center for artists and craftspeople.
McPherson has begun a series of preliminary conversations with what he calls stakeholders in the strategic planning process, such as the Camden Downtown Business Group, educational leaders, nonprofit organizations and other chambers of commerce and larger employers from across the region. He hopes to schedule a formal meeting this fall to define which goals make the most sense for Camden ˆ including pragmatic analysis of the costs and benefits of various options ˆ and to lay out the steps needed to achieve them.
It's a process, and a broad goal, similar to one being considered by a group of midcoast region residents calling themselves the Creative Quadrangle Alliance. Conceived last October by Richard Anderson, founder of the online news and community forum www.VillageSoup.com and the weekly newspaper VillageSoup Times, the alliance is an ad hoc group of between 10 and 20 area residents (depending on which meeting you attend) attempting to define a vision of economic and community development that builds upon what Anderson sees as the area's traditional draw for independent, "creative" people ˆ intellectually curious individuals who appreciate the area's natural beauty, arts and cultural amenities and small, distinct communities. The group's goal is to determine how to formalize that notion and propagate it nationwide, with a branding campaign that makes the midcoast "Creative Quadrangle" (or "Circle" ˆ the group hasn't yet decided which geometric shape its members prefer) as well known as North Carolina's Research Triangle.
The group also hopes to brainstorm marketing and business campaigns that could be implemented by towns, chambers or other organizations. "We want to brand ourselves as an area where the main thrust of any activity is creativity. That could be mean [attracting] a small research group of Microsoft's, or a startup biotech company," says Anderson. "The message we want to send is 'If you want to maximize the creativity of your people, put them here. We have the natural ingredients to nurture them.'"
Like McPherson, Anderson sees the vacant Knox Mill complex as a huge opportunity to reach out to these creative operations. But he also points out that the group's broader goals include encouraging an anti-sprawl approach to regional development, which would foster business development in smaller communities such as Appleton and Hope, and not just Camden, Rockland or Belfast.
If Camden leads, will MBNA follow?
Even if Anderson and McPherson develop consensus around their vision, potential trouble for these plans begins with the fact that nearly every state and small city in the country is trying to lure the same type of low impact, high paying companies. With a growing national interest in the so-called creative economy, Camden has to find a way to stand out.
To do that, McPherson envisions a marketing campaign that plays up Maine's reputation as a safe state with good schools and what he calls "human-scale" towns. Anderson also notes that he's waiting to see what plans come out of Gov. John Baldacci's creative economy initiative; he imagines that those statewide efforts could help create buzz around some of the ideas his group is working on.
For all the region's attractive qualities, though, discussions of economic and community development have to take into account the midcoast housing crunch. Mike Bonzagni, the housing and energy services director at Rockland-based Coastal Community Action Center, notes that Camden's median home price is now $292,500, which is driving would-be homebuyers farther afield and boosting prices even in inland towns such as Union, where the median home price jumped 63% between 2000 and 2003. Even existing area employers such as Penobscot Bay Medical Center have had trouble recruiting skilled workers because those employees can't find affordable apartment rentals, says Bonzagni. "If a company wants to move here and bring 100 jobs, where are those people going to live?" he says. "Economic development and housing go hand in hand, and right now we're caught between a rock and a hard place."
Burgeoning efforts to convene a far-ranging discussion on regional development could actually help ease the housing shortage, though, by focusing on potential solutions. Bonzagni notes that his organization helped Camden create its first affordable housing development, a 14-unit subdivision of single-family homes that is being finished this month. Plans are already underway for a second, larger Camden development of between 25 and 30 homes within the next three years, and Bonzagni is actively working with other midcoast towns to develop similar strategies.
Addressing regional issues still doesn't eliminate the biggest potential hurdle to implementing a new strategy: Someone has to ask MBNA to follow the guidelines laid out in that plan. And rather than waiting to hear what midcoast residents would like to see replace MBNA in Camden, the company may well end up filling the Knox Mill facility with whichever tenants it feels are appropriate.
That reality has some local businesspeople wondering if the town risks overreaching by incorporating potential Knox Mill uses in its plans. "We have to understand what our boundaries are," says Barrie Pribyl. "The Downtown Business Group's mission is to enhance business and retail opportunities. So we might look at what's missing from downtown and try and work within that milieu, but it's not our place to tell a for-profit company what it can and should do with its private property."
Similarly, Paul Lerner has not gotten involved with the larger debate about life in Camden after MBNA. His immediate interest is that the company continues to attract retailers and restaurants to street-level shops in the Knox Mill, so the area becomes a bustling shopping district. But when it comes to filling the remainder of the space, he trusts that MBNA will choose appropriate businesses for the town. "I would hope that MBNA is a model for future tenants ˆ something for them to emulate in their own relationship with the town," says Lerner.
Even Richard Anderson, who would like his group's efforts to influence some of the mill's re-uses, isn't worried about MBNA filling the space according to its own design. He, too, expects the company to choose appropriate tenants for the town and region, and sees an opportunity to build upon those new arrivals by using them as an additional draw for other creative companies and individuals.
In the long term, though, Anderson and McPherson believe their efforts to create a regional vision are still valid, even if Knox Mill is taken out of the picture. They both note that their processes started months ago, before MBNA announced it was leaving Camden, and will still be relevant years from now, as the economy continues to change and other large employers come and go. Though helping fill Knox Mill may not end up among their groups' responsibilities, MBNA's departure can still be a catalyst for the process ˆ what McPherson calls the "a-ha" factor that highlights the need, and the opportunity, to create a comprehensive vision. "The question of what should be done with the MBNA facilities is not ours to answer," says McPherson. "But what to do about broader economic and community development in the region ˆ that's our issue. MBNA is just a subset."
In October, MBNA approached Lerner with a proposition: The company had more real estate in town than it needed, and executives wanted to turn portions of its Knox Mill facility into a new, mixed-use development. Lerner's store was the kind of anchor tenant they said they needed to give the new retail zone drawing power, and the company offered The Owl & Turtle a landmark, 2,800-square-foot storefront on the corner of Washington and Mechanic streets. "The company was so generous with us in terms of offering us the space and really wanting us there," says Lerner, who credits MBNA with saving his store.
Lerner had no idea at the time, but his agreement with MBNA signaled the start of a process that eventually will result in a literal and symbolic re-ordering of Camden's downtown business district and community identity. Last month, MBNA announced it would pull out of Camden altogether, moving its 360 workers there to its Rockland and Belfast offices and marketing its Knox Mill office complex ˆ about 140,000 sq. ft. in all ˆ to new tenants. The company, which had been slowly decreasing the number of workers in Camden for the last few years, said the consolidation will help it operate more efficiently.
Moving vans arrived shortly after the announcement, and by April 15 MBNA was no longer operating in the town where, in 1993, it started building a Maine presence that's now 3,700 workers strong.
Given MBNA's high profile and generally positive reputation in town, there's naturally been some trepidation in the community about facing life after MBNA. But rather than treating MBNA's departure as a crisis, most residents and business owners see a tremendous opportunity for the town. It's a clean break that gives Camden the chance to create a new plan for economic and community development, one that targets new markets and builds on the prosperity the town already enjoys, thanks to MBNA's decade-long residency and a thriving seasonal tourism business. "This is a great opportunity for the community to put together a strategic plan that's in the best interest of the region," says Andy McPherson, executive director of the Camden-Rockport-Lincolnville Chamber of Commerce, who is trying to organize a regional discussion process to define that plan. "We're trying to take a longer view: What's the community going to look like five years or 10 years from now?"
MBNA's Knox Mill facility provides the foundation for many of these nebulous plans. The meticulously restored complex ˆ made up of the former mill and surrounding buildings, which are referred to collectively as the Knox Mill Center ˆ is a rarity in the region, offering flexible, class-A office space, state-of-the-art telecommunications capabilities, ample parking and facilities like a cafeteria. It's essentially a blank screen on which residents can project any number of options: a new retail and restaurant zone; a home for high-skilled, high-paying jobs offered by high-tech corporations; additional space for government or nonprofit offices; art studios; and even housing.
The catch is that the Knox Mill is still MBNA's private property, and the company is handling the marketing and leasing of the space itself. (For now, it appears MBNA has no intention of selling the property, even though the company recently sold its Ducktrap Motel in Lincolnville and has a few other Maine properties on the market.) And although Andy McPherson says he has asked MBNA if it would consider suggestions on re-use of the space and potential tenants, he admits that so far the company has not said much publicly about its strategy for marketing the mill. Likewise, MBNA would not return repeated phone calls from Mainebiz asking for comment on its plans for the Knox Mill.
Boosting the conference biz
Camden's retailers are one group attempting to direct, at least to a small degree, the direction Camden will take in the post-MBNA era. In the immediate term, most retailers expect business to slow down slightly without MBNA's 360 employees working around the corner. "There's just an energy that 300 people bring to town, and I can't imagine we won't notice at least some change," says Barrie Pribyl, owner of ABCD Books and co-president of the Camden Downtown Business Group.
There's also likely to be more of the small-scale reshuffling that's already occurred, as existing businesses move from their current locations to bigger or better spaces that once housed part of MBNA's sprawling operations. Along with The Owl & Turtle, Know Technology recently jumped a few blocks across town to take an open spot in the Knox Mill facility. Andy McPherson and downtown merchants like Paul Lerner want to see as few of those lateral moves as possible, however. They're hoping that MBNA's vacancy results in a net gain of businesses ˆ whether they're retailers, restaurants or corporations ˆ that make the area around Knox Mill thrive. And they know that having enough room within MBNA's clean, modern facilities will be a crucial factor in convincing potential business migrants to come to Camden.
But rather than focusing on who those new businesses might be, the Camden Downtown Business Group instead is considering strategies it can adopt to help all Camden retailers ˆ old and new ˆ stay busy all year. A higher percentage of businesses than usual seemed to shut down last winter, say some locals, and retailers don't want to see that trend gaining strength. In recent months, the group's focus has been on ways to attract small conferences to town outside of the summer high season. Local retailers, restaurateurs and innkeepers have seen the impact that the annual Camden Conference, a global affairs and foreign policy convention held in town every February since 1988, and Pop!Tech, a science, technology and culture conference founded in the late 90s, have had on the town during slower seasons.
A few more such events accommodating between 60 and 400 attendees, they figure, will help boost business during the slow winter months. "The town feels really good during Pop!Tech and the Camden Conference. We think it makes sense to find a market that helps us offset the seasonality of our business but is respectful of town residents," says Pribyl. "We want to be more proactive about attracting these small conferences."
By sticking with small conferences, Pribyl says the town can use existing infrastructure like the Camden Opera House and local restaurants and inns, and not have to worry about investing money to build a dedicated conference center. But the group is also wondering ˆ though it hasn't asked MBNA officials directly ˆ whether the vacant space at Knox Mill offers possible conference-related uses, such as rooms for breakout sessions and smaller meetings, that could make Camden an even more attractive destination for conference planners. For now, though, the group is still trying to determine exactly how to go about boosting its conference business, such as establishing a funding mechanism to hire someone part-time to market the town as a conference destination.
The "Creative Quadrangle"
The Downtown Business Group's focus on boosting conference activity may end up as one component of the comprehensive, forward-looking plan for broader regional development that McPherson hopes to develop. For his part, McPherson believes the centerpiece of such a plan should include courting a new set of corporate tenants to fill MBNA's former home and build on the firm's legacy of economic transformation. "My preference is to tap into the intellectual capital market, those businesses like biotech or research and development that are based on ideas or concepts and not manufactured products or services," says McPherson. "We want year-round, stable, high-paying companies that could be doing business anywhere in the world to come here."
Camden's natural setting, cultural offerings and small town feel have long attracted out-of-staters looking for an alternative to urban life, says McPherson. Now, with MBNA's high-quality office space available, the town has the final piece necessary to attract entire companies looking for that environment. Given Camden's high concentration of recent transplants and summer residents with connections to the high-technology or intellectual capital-intensive industries ˆ McPherson used to run a biomedical company in Seattle during the 1990s, and part-time residents and Pop!Tech founders Bob Metcalfe and John Sculley used to run 3Com and Apple Computer, respectively ˆ McPherson envisions a word-of-mouth campaign in which he and others call friends and colleagues in those industries to see who might be interested in moving to town. Then, they could encourage those interested parties to contact MBNA or pass the leads along to the company themselves.
Filling MBNA's space would be only part of the regional strategy that McPherson would like to see developed, however. He's envisioning a plan that also encompasses the recent inclusion of the decaying Apollo Tannery site and other area locations in a new Pine Tree Zone. He'd like to weigh the Downtown Business Group's interest in conferences alongside other ideas floating around town, such as attracting some kind of educational institution or large, national nonprofit group, or creating a new center for artists and craftspeople.
McPherson has begun a series of preliminary conversations with what he calls stakeholders in the strategic planning process, such as the Camden Downtown Business Group, educational leaders, nonprofit organizations and other chambers of commerce and larger employers from across the region. He hopes to schedule a formal meeting this fall to define which goals make the most sense for Camden ˆ including pragmatic analysis of the costs and benefits of various options ˆ and to lay out the steps needed to achieve them.
It's a process, and a broad goal, similar to one being considered by a group of midcoast region residents calling themselves the Creative Quadrangle Alliance. Conceived last October by Richard Anderson, founder of the online news and community forum www.VillageSoup.com and the weekly newspaper VillageSoup Times, the alliance is an ad hoc group of between 10 and 20 area residents (depending on which meeting you attend) attempting to define a vision of economic and community development that builds upon what Anderson sees as the area's traditional draw for independent, "creative" people ˆ intellectually curious individuals who appreciate the area's natural beauty, arts and cultural amenities and small, distinct communities. The group's goal is to determine how to formalize that notion and propagate it nationwide, with a branding campaign that makes the midcoast "Creative Quadrangle" (or "Circle" ˆ the group hasn't yet decided which geometric shape its members prefer) as well known as North Carolina's Research Triangle.
The group also hopes to brainstorm marketing and business campaigns that could be implemented by towns, chambers or other organizations. "We want to brand ourselves as an area where the main thrust of any activity is creativity. That could be mean [attracting] a small research group of Microsoft's, or a startup biotech company," says Anderson. "The message we want to send is 'If you want to maximize the creativity of your people, put them here. We have the natural ingredients to nurture them.'"
Like McPherson, Anderson sees the vacant Knox Mill complex as a huge opportunity to reach out to these creative operations. But he also points out that the group's broader goals include encouraging an anti-sprawl approach to regional development, which would foster business development in smaller communities such as Appleton and Hope, and not just Camden, Rockland or Belfast.
If Camden leads, will MBNA follow?
Even if Anderson and McPherson develop consensus around their vision, potential trouble for these plans begins with the fact that nearly every state and small city in the country is trying to lure the same type of low impact, high paying companies. With a growing national interest in the so-called creative economy, Camden has to find a way to stand out.
To do that, McPherson envisions a marketing campaign that plays up Maine's reputation as a safe state with good schools and what he calls "human-scale" towns. Anderson also notes that he's waiting to see what plans come out of Gov. John Baldacci's creative economy initiative; he imagines that those statewide efforts could help create buzz around some of the ideas his group is working on.
For all the region's attractive qualities, though, discussions of economic and community development have to take into account the midcoast housing crunch. Mike Bonzagni, the housing and energy services director at Rockland-based Coastal Community Action Center, notes that Camden's median home price is now $292,500, which is driving would-be homebuyers farther afield and boosting prices even in inland towns such as Union, where the median home price jumped 63% between 2000 and 2003. Even existing area employers such as Penobscot Bay Medical Center have had trouble recruiting skilled workers because those employees can't find affordable apartment rentals, says Bonzagni. "If a company wants to move here and bring 100 jobs, where are those people going to live?" he says. "Economic development and housing go hand in hand, and right now we're caught between a rock and a hard place."
Burgeoning efforts to convene a far-ranging discussion on regional development could actually help ease the housing shortage, though, by focusing on potential solutions. Bonzagni notes that his organization helped Camden create its first affordable housing development, a 14-unit subdivision of single-family homes that is being finished this month. Plans are already underway for a second, larger Camden development of between 25 and 30 homes within the next three years, and Bonzagni is actively working with other midcoast towns to develop similar strategies.
Addressing regional issues still doesn't eliminate the biggest potential hurdle to implementing a new strategy: Someone has to ask MBNA to follow the guidelines laid out in that plan. And rather than waiting to hear what midcoast residents would like to see replace MBNA in Camden, the company may well end up filling the Knox Mill facility with whichever tenants it feels are appropriate.
That reality has some local businesspeople wondering if the town risks overreaching by incorporating potential Knox Mill uses in its plans. "We have to understand what our boundaries are," says Barrie Pribyl. "The Downtown Business Group's mission is to enhance business and retail opportunities. So we might look at what's missing from downtown and try and work within that milieu, but it's not our place to tell a for-profit company what it can and should do with its private property."
Similarly, Paul Lerner has not gotten involved with the larger debate about life in Camden after MBNA. His immediate interest is that the company continues to attract retailers and restaurants to street-level shops in the Knox Mill, so the area becomes a bustling shopping district. But when it comes to filling the remainder of the space, he trusts that MBNA will choose appropriate businesses for the town. "I would hope that MBNA is a model for future tenants ˆ something for them to emulate in their own relationship with the town," says Lerner.
Even Richard Anderson, who would like his group's efforts to influence some of the mill's re-uses, isn't worried about MBNA filling the space according to its own design. He, too, expects the company to choose appropriate tenants for the town and region, and sees an opportunity to build upon those new arrivals by using them as an additional draw for other creative companies and individuals.
In the long term, though, Anderson and McPherson believe their efforts to create a regional vision are still valid, even if Knox Mill is taken out of the picture. They both note that their processes started months ago, before MBNA announced it was leaving Camden, and will still be relevant years from now, as the economy continues to change and other large employers come and go. Though helping fill Knox Mill may not end up among their groups' responsibilities, MBNA's departure can still be a catalyst for the process ˆ what McPherson calls the "a-ha" factor that highlights the need, and the opportunity, to create a comprehensive vision. "The question of what should be done with the MBNA facilities is not ours to answer," says McPherson. "But what to do about broader economic and community development in the region ˆ that's our issue. MBNA is just a subset."
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