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April 12, 2004

Home base | Rick Tetrev is working to keep Brunswick Naval Air Station off the Department of Defense's base closure list

By Michaela Cavallaro
Brian Hamel arrived at Loring Air Force Base 10 years ago this summer, just months before the base closed down. As president and CEO of the Loring Development Authority, he's overseen what many observers call an incredible success story in base redevelopment: Within the next few months, there will be 400 more civilian jobs on the former base than there were at the time of the closure.

Loring Commerce Centre's current tenants are divided between the private and public sector, and focused in the areas that Hamel and his colleagues defined back in the early 1990s: forestry products, aviation, industrial manufacturing and telecommunications.

Non-government employers include Pattison Sign Group, a Canadian manufacturer of electric signs that opened a manufacturing facility at Loring in February, with 55 of a planned 100 workers; Sitel, an Omaha-based provider of outsourced telemarketing and customer support services with about 300 employees in Limestone; and the Bangor-based Telford Group, an aviation service company which, as part of a joint venture with Volvo Aero, is operating an aircraft maintenance and recycling facility on the site.

Loring is also home to a service center for the Department of Defense's finance and accounting operations, with about 300 employees; and the Maine Military Authority, a state-run agency that refurbishes military vehicles and also has about 300 employees.

On March 1, Hamel began a leave of absence from the LDA to run for Maine's Second Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Running as a Republican, he will oppose Rep. Mike Michaud. Mainebiz spoke with Hamel recently about his tenure at Loring and the potential opportunities for other communities facing base closures.

Of all that's been accomplished at Loring, what makes you proudest?
It's the jobs. It's putting people back to work, which has been the most rewarding for all of us. When Loring closed, many people, certainly in Washington, D.C., and even in the state of Maine, thought Loring could never redevelop. So the outlook was pretty grim. And we're very proud of the fact that we've put back to work in excess of 100% of the jobs that were displaced when Loring closed. We lost 1,100 civilian jobs [along with about 1,300 military personnel] and the companies now at Loring will soon employ more than 1,500. It's over 1,000 right now, and we know Pattison and the Maine Military Authority are expanding.

You recently were quoted as saying that when you left the former Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, N.H., where you also worked on base redevelopment, people thought you were nuts. Since then, you've been honored as developer of the year by the National Association of Installation Developers in Washington, D.C., and won other awards. What's been the reaction of the people who once thought you were nuts?
We've made true believers out of the naysayers, for sure. We've proven that when we pull together as a team and have a well thought-out, financed and creative development plan, development can happen in rural Maine. For those people who thought that I had lost my marbles to attempt to develop something that they thought was impossible ˆ— they clearly now are true believers.

What about Loring was so attractive to companies?
There were a number of factors. The existing, available workforce was a huge plus. The people of Aroostook County and northern Maine have a great work ethic, high education levels and skill levels, and absenteeism isn't in their vocabulary. That made it easier for companies to come here. The second factor was the availability of first-class buildings that you could essentially turn the key and get in, as opposed to going through a planning process and 12- to 18-month construction process for a new building.

How did you decide what companies to go after, and how did you get the word out?
We didn't waste a lot of time or effort trying to attract businesses that didn't make sense for this region. We were honest with ourselves about what our assets and liabilities were as a community and tried to take best advantage of those assets. We looked into the industries we thought we had the best shot of attracting to northern Maine, based on the resources we had: value-added wood products and food processing, because of our forests and our agricultural resources. We wanted to go after industrial manufacturing, because of the skill sets of the local workforce and buildings that were conducive to that. [We were interested in] aircraft maintenance and overhaul, because the site is conducive to it, and telemarketing, where location doesn't matter as long as you've got the right kind of telecom infrastructure.

What problems or challenges did you face?
We thought our quickest hit would be from the telecommunication business, but we found out very quickly that our telecommunications infrastructure wasn't conducive to companies making that decision. We didn't have redundancy, we didn't have what they call a point of presence switch, we didn't have a lot of things that companies were looking for. We worked very hard ˆ— with Verizon, and AT&T and Time Warner ˆ— to improve that infrastructure. Once we did that, we were able to attract Sitel Corporation, a little over six years ago. They now have employed upwards of 350 people there.

You've said that the state needs to invest $25 million to $30 million in infrastructure at Loring. What's needed, and what would such improvements lead to down the road?
We have a 1950s-vintage former military base, and we have an aging infrastructure. The state has been providing us with a very small amount of our funding, in the vicinity of five percent to six percent of all the funding over the last 10 years. That was by design. We knew that the state could not afford to develop a property of this magnitude, and we went to our tenants, our private sector tenants, and structured deals. We went to the federal government and negotiated a precedent-setting real estate transaction that no other base closure has been able to do since, which gave us long-term funding after the closure.

But we need to upgrade the water plant and the sewer plant if we're going to be able to attract industrial manufacturing. We need to improve our aviation complex, because we believe that is really going to be where the future of Loring successes might lie. The state came to the table with $2.5 million to repair the arch hangar, which will now be home to Telford. That investment clearly has turned into jobs, and we have other aviation facilities that need improvements. And we need to renovate existing buildings and/or build new spec buildings because that's really the cornerstone of how we got to be successful.

What's next at Loring?
We think the future of the Pattison opportunity is big. I would not be surprised, once they start manufacturing, if they take the same route as the Maine Military Authority complex, where it started at about 10 employees and grew to well over 200. On the aviation side, I think the planning and work now going on by Telford Aviation is going to be the cornerstone of that aviation development effort. You're going to see aviation development start to blossom in the next two to three years.

I also think we have an opportunity to play a role in homeland security. I'm not at liberty to discuss the specifics of it, but for the same reason that Loring's aviation complex was a strategic location in the cold war, it's a strategic location in a world of homeland security. We're working closely with Sen. [Susan] Collins' office, trying to come up with a plan.

What are the lessons of Loring, for other areas of the state that are struggling?
Our community of [Aroostook County] really banded together in some very difficult times. The base closure came at the same time that you had agricultural problems and foreign-products problems and the loss of Canadian retail traffic. You had four legs of the economic stool get cut off at the same time.

But the community was committed to looking toward the future and recognized that it wasn't effective to have all your eggs in one basket. They saw how devastating it could be when the military closes a base that was the fabric of the economy, so they understood the importance of a diversified economy, they supported our development efforts, and they were patient with us because they knew that it wasn't going to happen overnight. We are, I think, now a more stable economy in northern Maine because of that diversity. Other communities in Maine can learn from that. There are many other communities that need to learn to diversify, so if, heaven forbid, a major employer closes, it's not just devastating.

Why run for Congress? How can you help Maine businesses from the national level?
Transportation infrastructure is a perfect example. Maine has a very poor transportation infrastructure, without an east-west highway, without an I-95 extension, with truck weight limits that are lower than other states. That in part is why you see a lot of manufacturing entities disappearing in Maine.

Health care reform is another issue. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't speak with small business owners in Maine about keeping health care costs for their employees under control. Certainly foreign trade issues need to be addressed. Every trade agreement needs to be looked at periodically to make sure that it's meeting the needs of U.S. businesses. I am a supporter of a global economy and fair trade. People often talk about free trade. I don't think there is such a thing as free trade, but we need a level playing field.

As a member of the board of trustees of Maine's community college system, how do you envision the system becoming a better supplier of workers for the state's businesses?
The decision to transform the system itself from a technical college system to a community college system is going to open the door to more Mainers to seek higher education. We have a low dropout rate in high school, but we don't have a great track record of continuing education after high school. [The new community college system] will provide a low-cost, open-access environment for Maine citizens to move into higher education and then beyond the community college to the four-year institutions at the university system. It's been proven around the country that states that have effective community college systems are the ones that are doing better economically, because they're providing employers with a better workforce.

You're chairman of the Maine Winter Sports Center. How successful was the recent Biathlon World Cup in Fort Kent, and what does it mean for the MWSC?
We had 6,500 people watching those events in Fort Kent, and 10,000 in the small community of Fort Kent watching the parade. Those people spent money in the local economy, and the competition was broadcast live to Germany, to 20 million people. There are companies in the tourism business in northern Maine now that will tell you they've started to get hits on their websites from people in Europe. We will, more than likely, given the huge success of the [world cup], host future world cup competitions. I would not be surprised if we saw annual world cup competitions in northern Maine, at both facilities in Presque Isle and Fort Kent.

Next year is supposed to be a big year for base closures. Do you have a sense of what might happen in Brunswick and Kittery?
The 2005 base closure process is expected to be as large as all of the other base closures combined. That's 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995 ˆ— four rounds. So communities need to be on their guard. Those communities need to work hard to prove to the federal government that they are a vital part of our national defense, and that Brunswick and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard are very important to that mix.

What's your advice for economic development officials in both places?
Don't take anything for granted. Because that military base has been in their community for so long, don't think it will be there forever. That's exactly what happened at Loring. People didn't think it was vulnerable. So don't take anything for granted. Work hard. You need to plan publicly and behind the scenes for a variety of different alternatives. Sometimes it's very difficult for communities to do that.

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