July 5, 2004
Building a framework | Bruce Hazard of the Maine Mountain Heritage Network leads a coalition seeking new revenues for western Maine
By Alan Elliott
Economic development traditionally has taken a tackle box approach: Tie on an array of elaborate lures ˆ tax incentives, an available workforce, a low cost of living and a quality community ethos ˆ and try to attract new businesses from outside the area.
Bruce Hazard is casting a slightly different line. Director of the Farmington-based Maine Mountain Heritage Network, Hazard heads an innovative effort to create economic ties among communities sprawled across Oxford, Franklin, Somerset and Piscataquis counties. The effort is based on an inside-out plan to build, rather than attract, economic opportunity in the Maine Mountain Heritage Area by capitalizing on natural, artistic, historical, community and business resources indigenous to the region.
Increasing tourism, however, is a key part of the plan; the organization has spent much of this year putting together a detailed marketing report. A region larger than Massachusetts, the Mountain Heritage Area remains comparatively undiscovered by the annual jet stream of summer tourists who breathe economic life into Maine's coast. The state Tourism Office reports that what it calls the Highlands and Lakes and Mountains regions ˆ roughly the same territory the Heritage Area covers ˆ attract about 23% of the state's total overnight tourist visits, many of them during the winter months.
The former owner of a production woodworking business, Hazard also has a background in the arts, with a masters of fine arts in theater directing from Boston University and a stint as the head of Maine Arts in Portland. Today, his job requires him to link the arts and natural resources with economic development. After three years of laying groundwork, the 59-year-old Belgrade resident describes the network as moving from the concept and preparation stage to a more active pursuit of the region's potential.
Hazard approaches the network's long-term, step-by-small-step undertaking with an attitude that there is little time to lose. Following is an edited transcript of his conversation with Mainebiz.
Mainebiz: A key piece of your strategy is a recreational plan for the Mountain Heritage Area. What does the plan attempt to do?
Hazard:The largest single public investment happening in our region at this point is land conservation. There has been an increasing amount of attention paid by people involved in those deals to maintaining the long-term prospects for the timber industry, and some interest in preserving the traditional access to lands for recreational purposes.
We're seeing that investment as potentially a real boon to the outdoor recreation industry ˆ if it's done well. There is a parallel investment that we see happening in larger-scale recreation projects. [Larry Warren's proposed] hut trail system is one good example. The Appalachian Mountain Club project in the Katahdin Iron Works area is another. There is also the Northern Forest Canoe Trail project, a 700-mile canoe route from Old Forge, N.Y., to Fort Kent, which is taking shape.
Our feeling was, if you develop a framework to guide this investment in a way that created some kind of coherent, integrated system of recreation opportunities in the region, local communities and businesses could position themselves both to support it and benefit from it. We are concerned that if that investment is done in a willy-nilly fashion, as is the case right now, we might not achieve that integration and [we might] lose [the ability] to present a kind of coherent picture to our potential customers.
So the plan, which involves landscape analysis, market analysis and some development scenario-building, is really intended to, first, get people talking to each other across these project areas. And, ultimately, to put some kind of a framework in place to guide that development and even, to some extent, to help shape the land conservation efforts.
There are a number of constituencies in that picture: trail and paddle sports, hunting and fishing, outdoor motorsports, timber industry and preservation interests ˆ relationships that traditionally have been pretty contentious.
It is a tremendously complicated picture.
Your argument is that there is a common interest among them.
I think increasingly there is. Five or 10 years ago it would have been much harder to have some of the conversations we're having today. Various interest groups are recognizing that, first, the times are changing and, second, the other interest groups aren't going away. I think there is an increasing willingness to work across these sector and interest lines. It means a plan like this might actually succeed at this point, when it might not have 10 or so years ago.
How did the network get its start?
We got some funding [in 1999] from a consortium of state agencies calling itself the Arts and Heritage Tourism Partnership. We had an initial grant of $15,000 to do a series of meetings. The work we started to do was aimed at tourism development, some resources conservation work and some community planning. As we were doing that I saw [some communities and other economic development agencies] in the region beginning to work in very similar ways.
So this first grant was basically to try to get those people together and begin to talk about what we had in common and whether there were ways in which we might either share resources or begin to work together. In those informal conversations, the agencies saw and liked what was happening, and asked us to come back with a proposal to undertake a real strategic planning process. The grant that supported the planning process was around $45,000 and is still in play ˆ we haven't actually completed it or gotten the final bit of that grant.
There are a number of initiatives that have started to take shape as a result of this planning effort. One is a comprehensive discussion regarding community investment ˆ ways to add dimension to the visitor experience through emphasis on downtown revitalization, trail and green space planning and support for cultural institutions. Additional recreation and cultural planning is another, including a chain of cultural centers strung throughout the region. We are also working on a signature product program ˆ a kind of common brand identity that would link businesses across the area.
You also are drafting a marketing plan?
We spent much of this year drafting reports on recreation, tourism, culturalheritage tourism, wood products and small-scale manufacturing; we [also] looked at agriculture and we looked at art and craft products. In each of those cases we tried to assess what was going on in the region ˆ what was the scale of the activity, the type of the activity [and] if we had information about market trends, we included that.
The marketing plan took the market analysis aspect of that a few steps forward. [We] did a review of the literature in each of those sectors, interviewed people who were knowledgeable. And then, in particular, focused in on what we identified as cross-sector market opportunities.
As we did a survey of manufacturers in the region, we discovered a kind of cluster of recreation-related products that are being manufactured or produced here. These are large- and small-scale companies; New Balance [in Skowhegan, Norridgewock and Norway] would be one on the larger end. There are a couple of canoe makers, some smaller-scale outdoor apparel manufacturers and a granola company that has started to make a trail mix.
So we are looking at that family of products, which is not yet a family, and trying to assess the opportunity for branding and marketing those in connection with outdoor recreation marketing for the region. It's that kind of cross-sector opportunity we think is attractive.
You talk about customers and tourism; what is the network's ultimate aim?
The overarching goal is to bring new revenue to the region. We're doing that by creating new products and developing new approaches to marketing the products in the region as a whole.
Your group estimates the region sees about $400 million a year in revenue from tourism. How did you arrive at that figure?
Longwoods International is a research organization based in Canada. The Office of Tourism has contracted with them for the past five years to generate information about who comes to Maine, why are they coming and how much are they spending. They have generated a really good base of information for the state as a whole.
Two or three years ago [the Office of Tourism] asked Longwoods to break that information out by tourism region. So we were able to get a look at the information for the three regions [in the Mountain Heritage Area].
How big a portion of that $400 million is from the ski and snowmobile crowd?
We're estimating about half of it overall is directly related to outdoor recreation, and probably half of that is winter sports. Skiing and snowmobiling are something like 15% of the total.
We estimate that across the region there is about an even division in terms of outdoor recreation in summer and winter. Summer is the major season in the Rangeley area, a little bit less in Bethel. Jackman has a much higher level of activity in the winter than in the summer.
You said you think you can boost that $400 million by 20% over five years. Where does that projection come from?
We actually don't have a good explanation for the 20% figure. It's just a figure that we came up with. There are some in our group who say 10% is what we should trying for. So although it is somewhat from the hip, 20% is the number we are shooting for.
To a family planning a vacation, Maine's mountain region is in a number of ways similar to areas of Vermont, New Hamp-shire and upstate New York. What distinguishes your product?
We've spent some time working on that. In the marketing plan we've begun to look at this issue of what are the competitive advantages [of the Mountain Heritage Area]. And you have to draw some pretty fine distinctions to really get at that, and there is some question as to whether those distinctions may be too fine for a larger market. So at that point you start talking in geographic terms about market advantage. We are closer to Boston than the Adirondacks are, and they are closer to New York. So geographic advantage has become a real key concept for us.
So has the fact that we are a working landscape. The large undeveloped expanse that's still in private hands is a major distinction: We aren't a park, as opposed to the Adirondacks. We are larger and less developed than similar areas in Vermont or New Hampshire.
We have to understand, from a tourism point of view, how to define ourselves better that way and create experiences, based on that notion of a working landscape, that really do distinguish us from the kind of thing available, for example, in the White Mountains National Forest.
On the other hand, we're going to have to manage this carefully. One of the things we haven't started to talk about is the issue of unintended consequences of bringing lots of new people to the region. I think all of us are really committed to a more sustainable approach that honors both the natural systems and the local culture. We don't want to create a situation in which we are giving up the most valuable parts of our own life experience here in the interest of bringing new people to the region.
It's a conundrum, it's a balancing act, and we are very sensitive to that.
One of Maine's traditional appeals for a lot of people has been a culture of individualism. How do you create a collective approach that doesn't dilute that appeal?
You have as a part of the traditional culture here ˆ there is clearly a real tendency toward individual prerogatives and people stay out of each other's business to the extent that they can. On the other hand, when the occasion arises when a collective action is required ˆ somebody's house burns down or someone is sick ˆ community does gather together. So there is also an underpinning of a tradition of community action.
It's paradox in a way that you have those two strong strains running through the identity here. Based on that, we're hopeful that we can create a situation where people are willing to work together without too much to diminish their prerogatives. I think if we were running too much counter to that we wouldn't get anywhere.
How about the concept of a northern national park ˆ how does that sit with you?
I am not a proponent of the national park. I think we certainly share a lot of interests with the people who are proponents of that approach. There are certainly some natural systems we want to see protected. There are some recreation opportunities we want to see developed. And I think [park proponents] espouse, as we do, having these things done in way that benefits local communities.
But I'm personally not at all sure that a national park is the best way to achieve those results in this region and at this time. Our whole effort is about giving the local communities of the region more of a role in determining their own future and the future of the region as a whole. So in a sense, it is directly contrary to the idea of having the federal government step in to be an immediately governing entity.
That being said, I think there are lots of ways in which we are going to need federal assistance and would even like to work with the park service as a partner. So I don't have the antipathy toward federal agencies that some who are resisting the park idea do. And that is really important to make clear. Because even though I don't think the model of a national park is the right model, I think these federal agencies and some federal funding sources can be really important to the region going forward.
In overview, what is at stake here?
We've got a region that is undergoing a pretty stressful economic transition. Traditional forestry and manufacturing-based industries have changed and there are some interesting new opportunities emerging. There seems to be a new willingness on the part of some key players in the region ˆ including some of the largest landholders ˆ to work together as they need to take advantage of some of these opportunities.
And through our network there is a set of ideas or concepts that are rising to the surface that can help to organize and give that some direction and some focus. I think it's a huge opportunity for the region. On the other hand, it's really complicated. And there are a lot of players and in many places limited resources, so it's not a slam dunk.
But I really do see this as a window in time to give the businesses and the communities here a real role in determining what that future is going to look like.
Bruce Hazard is casting a slightly different line. Director of the Farmington-based Maine Mountain Heritage Network, Hazard heads an innovative effort to create economic ties among communities sprawled across Oxford, Franklin, Somerset and Piscataquis counties. The effort is based on an inside-out plan to build, rather than attract, economic opportunity in the Maine Mountain Heritage Area by capitalizing on natural, artistic, historical, community and business resources indigenous to the region.
Increasing tourism, however, is a key part of the plan; the organization has spent much of this year putting together a detailed marketing report. A region larger than Massachusetts, the Mountain Heritage Area remains comparatively undiscovered by the annual jet stream of summer tourists who breathe economic life into Maine's coast. The state Tourism Office reports that what it calls the Highlands and Lakes and Mountains regions ˆ roughly the same territory the Heritage Area covers ˆ attract about 23% of the state's total overnight tourist visits, many of them during the winter months.
The former owner of a production woodworking business, Hazard also has a background in the arts, with a masters of fine arts in theater directing from Boston University and a stint as the head of Maine Arts in Portland. Today, his job requires him to link the arts and natural resources with economic development. After three years of laying groundwork, the 59-year-old Belgrade resident describes the network as moving from the concept and preparation stage to a more active pursuit of the region's potential.
Hazard approaches the network's long-term, step-by-small-step undertaking with an attitude that there is little time to lose. Following is an edited transcript of his conversation with Mainebiz.
Mainebiz: A key piece of your strategy is a recreational plan for the Mountain Heritage Area. What does the plan attempt to do?
Hazard:The largest single public investment happening in our region at this point is land conservation. There has been an increasing amount of attention paid by people involved in those deals to maintaining the long-term prospects for the timber industry, and some interest in preserving the traditional access to lands for recreational purposes.
We're seeing that investment as potentially a real boon to the outdoor recreation industry ˆ if it's done well. There is a parallel investment that we see happening in larger-scale recreation projects. [Larry Warren's proposed] hut trail system is one good example. The Appalachian Mountain Club project in the Katahdin Iron Works area is another. There is also the Northern Forest Canoe Trail project, a 700-mile canoe route from Old Forge, N.Y., to Fort Kent, which is taking shape.
Our feeling was, if you develop a framework to guide this investment in a way that created some kind of coherent, integrated system of recreation opportunities in the region, local communities and businesses could position themselves both to support it and benefit from it. We are concerned that if that investment is done in a willy-nilly fashion, as is the case right now, we might not achieve that integration and [we might] lose [the ability] to present a kind of coherent picture to our potential customers.
So the plan, which involves landscape analysis, market analysis and some development scenario-building, is really intended to, first, get people talking to each other across these project areas. And, ultimately, to put some kind of a framework in place to guide that development and even, to some extent, to help shape the land conservation efforts.
There are a number of constituencies in that picture: trail and paddle sports, hunting and fishing, outdoor motorsports, timber industry and preservation interests ˆ relationships that traditionally have been pretty contentious.
It is a tremendously complicated picture.
Your argument is that there is a common interest among them.
I think increasingly there is. Five or 10 years ago it would have been much harder to have some of the conversations we're having today. Various interest groups are recognizing that, first, the times are changing and, second, the other interest groups aren't going away. I think there is an increasing willingness to work across these sector and interest lines. It means a plan like this might actually succeed at this point, when it might not have 10 or so years ago.
How did the network get its start?
We got some funding [in 1999] from a consortium of state agencies calling itself the Arts and Heritage Tourism Partnership. We had an initial grant of $15,000 to do a series of meetings. The work we started to do was aimed at tourism development, some resources conservation work and some community planning. As we were doing that I saw [some communities and other economic development agencies] in the region beginning to work in very similar ways.
So this first grant was basically to try to get those people together and begin to talk about what we had in common and whether there were ways in which we might either share resources or begin to work together. In those informal conversations, the agencies saw and liked what was happening, and asked us to come back with a proposal to undertake a real strategic planning process. The grant that supported the planning process was around $45,000 and is still in play ˆ we haven't actually completed it or gotten the final bit of that grant.
There are a number of initiatives that have started to take shape as a result of this planning effort. One is a comprehensive discussion regarding community investment ˆ ways to add dimension to the visitor experience through emphasis on downtown revitalization, trail and green space planning and support for cultural institutions. Additional recreation and cultural planning is another, including a chain of cultural centers strung throughout the region. We are also working on a signature product program ˆ a kind of common brand identity that would link businesses across the area.
You also are drafting a marketing plan?
We spent much of this year drafting reports on recreation, tourism, culturalheritage tourism, wood products and small-scale manufacturing; we [also] looked at agriculture and we looked at art and craft products. In each of those cases we tried to assess what was going on in the region ˆ what was the scale of the activity, the type of the activity [and] if we had information about market trends, we included that.
The marketing plan took the market analysis aspect of that a few steps forward. [We] did a review of the literature in each of those sectors, interviewed people who were knowledgeable. And then, in particular, focused in on what we identified as cross-sector market opportunities.
As we did a survey of manufacturers in the region, we discovered a kind of cluster of recreation-related products that are being manufactured or produced here. These are large- and small-scale companies; New Balance [in Skowhegan, Norridgewock and Norway] would be one on the larger end. There are a couple of canoe makers, some smaller-scale outdoor apparel manufacturers and a granola company that has started to make a trail mix.
So we are looking at that family of products, which is not yet a family, and trying to assess the opportunity for branding and marketing those in connection with outdoor recreation marketing for the region. It's that kind of cross-sector opportunity we think is attractive.
You talk about customers and tourism; what is the network's ultimate aim?
The overarching goal is to bring new revenue to the region. We're doing that by creating new products and developing new approaches to marketing the products in the region as a whole.
Your group estimates the region sees about $400 million a year in revenue from tourism. How did you arrive at that figure?
Longwoods International is a research organization based in Canada. The Office of Tourism has contracted with them for the past five years to generate information about who comes to Maine, why are they coming and how much are they spending. They have generated a really good base of information for the state as a whole.
Two or three years ago [the Office of Tourism] asked Longwoods to break that information out by tourism region. So we were able to get a look at the information for the three regions [in the Mountain Heritage Area].
How big a portion of that $400 million is from the ski and snowmobile crowd?
We're estimating about half of it overall is directly related to outdoor recreation, and probably half of that is winter sports. Skiing and snowmobiling are something like 15% of the total.
We estimate that across the region there is about an even division in terms of outdoor recreation in summer and winter. Summer is the major season in the Rangeley area, a little bit less in Bethel. Jackman has a much higher level of activity in the winter than in the summer.
You said you think you can boost that $400 million by 20% over five years. Where does that projection come from?
We actually don't have a good explanation for the 20% figure. It's just a figure that we came up with. There are some in our group who say 10% is what we should trying for. So although it is somewhat from the hip, 20% is the number we are shooting for.
To a family planning a vacation, Maine's mountain region is in a number of ways similar to areas of Vermont, New Hamp-shire and upstate New York. What distinguishes your product?
We've spent some time working on that. In the marketing plan we've begun to look at this issue of what are the competitive advantages [of the Mountain Heritage Area]. And you have to draw some pretty fine distinctions to really get at that, and there is some question as to whether those distinctions may be too fine for a larger market. So at that point you start talking in geographic terms about market advantage. We are closer to Boston than the Adirondacks are, and they are closer to New York. So geographic advantage has become a real key concept for us.
So has the fact that we are a working landscape. The large undeveloped expanse that's still in private hands is a major distinction: We aren't a park, as opposed to the Adirondacks. We are larger and less developed than similar areas in Vermont or New Hampshire.
We have to understand, from a tourism point of view, how to define ourselves better that way and create experiences, based on that notion of a working landscape, that really do distinguish us from the kind of thing available, for example, in the White Mountains National Forest.
On the other hand, we're going to have to manage this carefully. One of the things we haven't started to talk about is the issue of unintended consequences of bringing lots of new people to the region. I think all of us are really committed to a more sustainable approach that honors both the natural systems and the local culture. We don't want to create a situation in which we are giving up the most valuable parts of our own life experience here in the interest of bringing new people to the region.
It's a conundrum, it's a balancing act, and we are very sensitive to that.
One of Maine's traditional appeals for a lot of people has been a culture of individualism. How do you create a collective approach that doesn't dilute that appeal?
You have as a part of the traditional culture here ˆ there is clearly a real tendency toward individual prerogatives and people stay out of each other's business to the extent that they can. On the other hand, when the occasion arises when a collective action is required ˆ somebody's house burns down or someone is sick ˆ community does gather together. So there is also an underpinning of a tradition of community action.
It's paradox in a way that you have those two strong strains running through the identity here. Based on that, we're hopeful that we can create a situation where people are willing to work together without too much to diminish their prerogatives. I think if we were running too much counter to that we wouldn't get anywhere.
How about the concept of a northern national park ˆ how does that sit with you?
I am not a proponent of the national park. I think we certainly share a lot of interests with the people who are proponents of that approach. There are certainly some natural systems we want to see protected. There are some recreation opportunities we want to see developed. And I think [park proponents] espouse, as we do, having these things done in way that benefits local communities.
But I'm personally not at all sure that a national park is the best way to achieve those results in this region and at this time. Our whole effort is about giving the local communities of the region more of a role in determining their own future and the future of the region as a whole. So in a sense, it is directly contrary to the idea of having the federal government step in to be an immediately governing entity.
That being said, I think there are lots of ways in which we are going to need federal assistance and would even like to work with the park service as a partner. So I don't have the antipathy toward federal agencies that some who are resisting the park idea do. And that is really important to make clear. Because even though I don't think the model of a national park is the right model, I think these federal agencies and some federal funding sources can be really important to the region going forward.
In overview, what is at stake here?
We've got a region that is undergoing a pretty stressful economic transition. Traditional forestry and manufacturing-based industries have changed and there are some interesting new opportunities emerging. There seems to be a new willingness on the part of some key players in the region ˆ including some of the largest landholders ˆ to work together as they need to take advantage of some of these opportunities.
And through our network there is a set of ideas or concepts that are rising to the surface that can help to organize and give that some direction and some focus. I think it's a huge opportunity for the region. On the other hand, it's really complicated. And there are a lot of players and in many places limited resources, so it's not a slam dunk.
But I really do see this as a window in time to give the businesses and the communities here a real role in determining what that future is going to look like.
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