🔒Eastport’s lessons for Maine

This year, we at Mainebiz have had the honor of being welcomed in six locations statewide as part of our “On the Road” events.

This was my first visit to Eastport, and my furthest venture Downeast. If you haven't been, Eastport has the sort of downtown you'd see in a movie, with solid stone or brick buildings dating to the late 1800s (after the latest big downtown fire), and a main street (Water Street) dotted with small parks or squares. There are statues of a fisherman and a mermaid. All of this is highlighted by a view to the east of Campobello Island in Canada. At every moment, whether it's from the angle of the sun or the cold water that abounds, you are reminded you are at the edge of the United States.

At a small roundtable discussion before the networking event, we were reminded by Chris Gardner, director of the Eastport Port Authority and a recent Mainebiz NEXT List honoree, that to be competitive it takes more than the aforementioned beautiful downtown.

“We have 1.2 million people in Maine. If you do the math, 35 kids are born each day. You open up the newspapers and count the obits, I think you'll find more than 35 a day. We've got a math problem here,” Gardner says, only half-jokingly.

He said that rather than focus on the city's beauty and downtown, the city has pitched itself to cruise ships and others as a center for logistics: The port is nice, yeah, and they're building a new breakwater, but it's the deep-water access and the fact that they can off-load trash and other waste that's a selling point to ships.

Gardner and other leaders have urged community colleges and the University of Maine at Machias to offers courses of study for skilled labor. To combat the drain of young people, Gardner urges schools to look at what Washington Academy in East Machias is doing by recruiting foreign students.

Leaders also stressed the need for better broadband and cellular connectivity.

Broadband as economic development

In Sanford, a new broadband network is part of a wider effort to encourage economic development to the area. The town had at one time hoped to get a casino. Now the Sanford Regional Economic Growth Council and Sanford City Council worked together to deploy high-speed optical fiber to key employers and “anchor” institutions, including schools, medical facilities, manufacturers, industrial parks, the historic mill yard and city government. In late September, the town announced plans to build a 32-mile municipal broadband network and connection to the Three Ring Binder. NextGen Telecom of Rochester, N.H., is building the network and GWI of Biddeford will operate it.

It will be the largest municipal network in Maine and the first major loop connecting York County to the Three Ring Binder, which laid 1,100 miles of fiber statewide and was completed in 2012.

Only in Maine

On a recent weekend, I was paddling and swimming from the beach next to the Chebeague Transportation Corp.'s parking lot on Cousins Island. Two high school kids showed up to get an old car started. They quickly discovered it needed a tow and asked me if I had a rope. All I had were the tie-down straps for my standup paddleboard — and I gladly loaned them one (knowing I had backup in case the strap broke).

As I headed down to the water, I overheard one of them swear and lament that the strap had indeed broken, and I thought to myself, “Well, I'll never see them again.”

I paddled and an hour later came back to my car.

Attached to the rear windshield wiper was the broken strap and 10 $1 bills, waving in the breeze for all to see.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. The earnest young men came clean, apparently scrounging their pockets for the last dollars. Equally surprising, the money had not been stolen off the rear window.

Only in Maine, my friends, only in Maine.