April 17, 2006
Putting out the welcome mat | Aroostook County looks to a new tourism business plan and impending resort feasibility study for strategies to diversify its economy
By Douglas Rooks
Economic developers are often encouraged to think big, and that's exactly what local and regional leaders are doing when it comes to tourism in Aroostook County. The County has seen the decline of potato farming, the dwindling of jobs in the paper and timber industries, and the closing of Loring Air Force just a decade ago. While there's been some success in restoring jobs and economic activity at the Loring Commerce Centre, Aroostook officials need no convincing that a diversified economy is the key to future success.
Even traditional economic development agencies like the Northern Maine Development Commission in Presque Isle, which once concentrated on bringing more papermaking and sawmills into the area, are taking the alternatives seriously: Last December, NMDC completed its "Five-year Tourism Business Plan for Northern Maine," which highlights Aroostook's considerable potential in attracting tourists, and its previous lack of cooperation between different agencies and businesses necessary to become a destination for visitors.
Elaine Carmichael, president of Economic Stewardship in Sturgeon Bay, Wis, whose firm prepared the plan for NMDC, said the challenge "was to imagine what tourists would want in a part of Maine that doesn't have lobsters or access to the coast."
The plan discusses some salient facts ˆ only three percent of visitors to Maine list Aroostook County as their destination ˆ and pairs them with more encouraging news. Some 97% of visitors to the County, for instance, found the people they met friendly, and 91% rated outdoor recreational opportunities excellent or good. It identified the chief attractions for tourists as the landscape, outdoor recreation, and communities ˆ while pointing out that the lack of a central destination makes it difficult to focus a marketing campaign for new visitors.
For the destination problem, though, NMDC officials believe they have a solid line on a potential solution. In late April, NMDC will release a resort feasibility study that will, in essence, find such a project very feasible. "The national people tell us that, on a scale of one to 10, we're an eight," said Alain Ouelette, the agency's economic development director.
That assessment is shared by Walt Elish, director of the Aroostook Partnership for Progress, a two-year-old private development organization that shares space with NMDC. Elish had just returned from Las Vegas, where he met with developers working with Coastal Resorts, the resort feasibility plan consultant. Those experts cite northern Maine's growing reputation as a winter sports mecca ˆ not only for snowmobiling, but also for internationally competitive Nordic skiing ˆ as the much-needed hook for such a resort plan. "You know how it is. You work on 10 projects and maybe one succeeds," Elish said.
"This plan looks very solid. We're very encouraged about moving forward."
As Elish envisions the resort, it could involve a $100 million private investment, and would do some of the little things the tourism plan recommends, such as cultivating so-called affinity markets like snowmobiling. "We'd use the resort as the hub for guiding services, tours and packages around the area," he said. "Say you'd like to snowmobile but you haven't done it before, or you don't know the trails here ˆ you could do that while staying in a four- or five-star resort, something this part of the state has never had."
There no doubt that tourism officials see a potential resort as a chance to jumpstart Aroostook's tourism development. But they don't minimize the distance the County needs to go to catch up ˆ whether in developing the tourist-friendly reservation systems of neighboring Canada, competing with the dozens of other, better known winter resort destinations or getting existing tourist-centered businesses in the region to start cooperating. Naturally, money for investment is a concern ˆ but not as big a concern as in the past. NMDC Executive Director Robert Clark points out that the resort plan, which cost $200,000, was funded largely by private dollars, and said the private sector is committed to continuing those investments.
The skiing example
Supporters of the plan to boost tourism in the County are encouraged by the growth of a new recreational industry ˆ the cross-country ski centers in Presque Isle and Fort Kent, initially sponsored by the Libra Foundation. Ray Hughes is a commercial lender for TD Banknorth in Presque Isle who knows a lot about prospects for growth among existing businesses. As a volunteer, he has thrown his efforts behind pushing skiing as both a healthy activity for County residents and a key to their future economic success.
The first biathlon World Cup races ever held in Maine, in 2004, attracted wide media attention and were telecast live in parts of Europe. But succeeding seasons have brought even more high-profile ski meets and races, with even the winter just past rating a major success. "The competitors told us this was the best snow they'd skied on all winter," Hughes said of the Junior Biathlon World Championship held in late January that featured athletes from 26 countries. "Even when there was no snow in Presque Isle, the course held the snow and was manageable."
That event had a budget of $800,000 to pay for everything from nearly 200 area hotel rooms booked for competitors to 18,000 meals served to team members and volunteers, according to event director Tim Doak. But he estimates the spin-off economic impact at $3 million to $4 million.
In addition to the international youth biathlon, which had 300 contestants, the Aroostook courses hosted the Eastern High School competition for 275 athletes, and a stop on the U.S. Ski Association tour. Together, this winter's events were a bigger draw than the 2004 World Cup, and the area has also begun attracting off-season meetings such as the Biathlon Organizers meeting scheduled for June. The Nordic Heritage Ski Club also is branching out into warmer season events like mountain bike racing, and saw its first professional biking events last fall on the new trails.
To Hughes and Robert Clark at NMDC, skiing and other recreational opportunities answer the question of what to do in the region, and provide a focus for the type of large resort development now planned for other inland Maine locales such as Moosehead Lake, Brownville and Millinocket. "To be honest," Clark said, "this resort project is something we could have done 10 years ago. But now we're focused on it, and we think we can make it work."
A decade ago, before many of the major cutbacks in the wood-products industry occurred, people in the area were less likely to see tourism as an economic mainstay, he said. Yet he doesn't see any lingering effects of that attitude that would create conflict between encouraging more tourism while maintaining whatever industry Aroostook can still attract. "That never came up in all our meetings concerning the tourism plan," Clark said. "I don't think people from other parts of Maine realize just how much space there is here. You can drive for miles on a state road and not see a house, and you can take to the woods and hardly see a vacation home."
Making connections
But the "big bang" of a major new resort may not be the whole ballgame. David Versel, an economic planning consultant in Biddeford who worked on the tourism plan, frequently partners with Economic Stewardship on such studies. He said the Aroostook study bodes well for changing attitudes up north, but that tourism advocates will have to keep working on expanding existing expectations for the region's drawing power. "Everyone knows about hunting in northern Maine. Hunting is important, but it's mostly a few weeks in one season," Versel said. "[The Registered Maine Guides] may not believe it yet, but they're starting to see that more people will come to shoot moose and bears with cameras than with guns. And when you get to that point, you really are talking about a year-round economy."
He also said the area needs other infrastructure improvements beyond a destination resort. The County's shaky highway connections to the rest of the state are mentioned in the plan, and they remain a constant concern among County residents; the St. John Valley has long been pressing for a highway comparable to Interstate 95, which now ends in Houlton. "People recognize the need for infrastructure when they're building a new manufacturing plant, but they seem to think that tourism dollars should be free for the taking. They're not," Versel said.
But building infrastructure means a lot more than roads, he added. It involves creating connections between tourism businesses so they can shop for customers as a group and organize packages of common admissions for museums. For example, Versel pointed out that the national scenic byway website (www.byways.org) includes a description of Route 11 ˆ the county's second major north-south route along with Route 1 ˆ that winds some 90 miles through woods, small towns, and agricultural land. But the site offers no information on attractions along the way. "People who want scenic drives also want somewhere to go. There have to be highlights or they'll go elsewhere," he said.
On the other hand, there's nothing preventing people from choosing Aroostook if they have a good reason, Versel said ˆ not even the perceived distance from major markets. He's worked on projects in areas as remote as the Sandhills region of north-central Nebraska that have been successful as tourist draws. "If you can get them to come there," he said of the vast Great Plains, "you can get them to come to northern Maine."
One of the most successful examples of a rural region reinventing itself for tourism is Michigan's Upper Peninsula, which has branded itself as the "Great Waters" area astride three of the five Great Lakes. "The slogan was easy, but getting communities to cooperate was the hard part," Versel said. "They've been working on this for 50 years, and it was just in the last 15 years that it all came together."
Similarly, one of the five-year tourism plan's recommendations for northern Maine is to create a single theme for the entire county, replacing such past marketing campaigns as "The Crown of Maine," "It's Only Natural," and "Last Frontier of the East." Yet the report also says that the distinctive regions within the county must be recognized. Southern Aroostook around Houlton ˆ the central potato growing region ˆ the western interior with its vast forests, and the St. John Valley must all figure in tourism efforts, along with distinctive enclaves such as New Sweden and the Micmac and Maliseet tribes.
Clark said that NMDC this year plans to proceed with the branding idea, which the plan suggests should start with a statewide tourism summit. A marketing firm will be hired for the project, with the cost likely split between public funds and private contributions. Clark also hopes to get started soon on a central on-line reservation system for restaurants and lodging envisioned in the plan.
Across the international border in New Brunswick, a more organized approach to tourism is already evident, including integrated reservation systems, well-designed websites and tour packages, acknowledged Alain Ouelette: "A lot of it is about dollars, but it's also about organization."
The County's own efforts need to be closely coordinated, he said. NMDC is considering merging its tourism efforts with those of LEAD (Leaders Encouraging Aroostook Development), a group perhaps best known for its advocacy of better highways. At the Aroostook Partnership, Walt Elish said there's already considerable awareness that the county can't simply look within for its future. The 24 private-sector companies investing in APP include all the area's banks, energy companies like Dead River and Public Service Co. of Maine, the major provider of electricity. "They recognize that their own futures depend on attracting new investment, which is why they're willing to make a financial commitment," Elish said. "They need a rising tide for their businesses, too."
Supporters hope the new tourism plan will encourage further participation from area business. That plan also was finished "at a good time," said Elish, because the upcoming resort feasibility study could spark further interest in building tourism potential throughout the county.
A resort, however large, is not the whole answer, but it is the opportunity to build a "hub, spoke and wheel" model for tourism, said Elish, adding, "This is an 'experience northern Maine' opportunity. Whether you want to fly-fish, canoe the Allagash, mountain bike, ski or snowmobile, your experience ought to start here."
A resort plan may be the most noticeable push for tourism development in Aroostook when it's unveiled later this month, but advocates are hoping the attention the study receives, along with the goals outlined in the five-year tourism business plan, make it easier to transition from an industrial economy. "We had the option to wait and see what might develop on its own," said Elish. "And we decided that wasn't what we needed to do."
Even traditional economic development agencies like the Northern Maine Development Commission in Presque Isle, which once concentrated on bringing more papermaking and sawmills into the area, are taking the alternatives seriously: Last December, NMDC completed its "Five-year Tourism Business Plan for Northern Maine," which highlights Aroostook's considerable potential in attracting tourists, and its previous lack of cooperation between different agencies and businesses necessary to become a destination for visitors.
Elaine Carmichael, president of Economic Stewardship in Sturgeon Bay, Wis, whose firm prepared the plan for NMDC, said the challenge "was to imagine what tourists would want in a part of Maine that doesn't have lobsters or access to the coast."
The plan discusses some salient facts ˆ only three percent of visitors to Maine list Aroostook County as their destination ˆ and pairs them with more encouraging news. Some 97% of visitors to the County, for instance, found the people they met friendly, and 91% rated outdoor recreational opportunities excellent or good. It identified the chief attractions for tourists as the landscape, outdoor recreation, and communities ˆ while pointing out that the lack of a central destination makes it difficult to focus a marketing campaign for new visitors.
For the destination problem, though, NMDC officials believe they have a solid line on a potential solution. In late April, NMDC will release a resort feasibility study that will, in essence, find such a project very feasible. "The national people tell us that, on a scale of one to 10, we're an eight," said Alain Ouelette, the agency's economic development director.
That assessment is shared by Walt Elish, director of the Aroostook Partnership for Progress, a two-year-old private development organization that shares space with NMDC. Elish had just returned from Las Vegas, where he met with developers working with Coastal Resorts, the resort feasibility plan consultant. Those experts cite northern Maine's growing reputation as a winter sports mecca ˆ not only for snowmobiling, but also for internationally competitive Nordic skiing ˆ as the much-needed hook for such a resort plan. "You know how it is. You work on 10 projects and maybe one succeeds," Elish said.
"This plan looks very solid. We're very encouraged about moving forward."
As Elish envisions the resort, it could involve a $100 million private investment, and would do some of the little things the tourism plan recommends, such as cultivating so-called affinity markets like snowmobiling. "We'd use the resort as the hub for guiding services, tours and packages around the area," he said. "Say you'd like to snowmobile but you haven't done it before, or you don't know the trails here ˆ you could do that while staying in a four- or five-star resort, something this part of the state has never had."
There no doubt that tourism officials see a potential resort as a chance to jumpstart Aroostook's tourism development. But they don't minimize the distance the County needs to go to catch up ˆ whether in developing the tourist-friendly reservation systems of neighboring Canada, competing with the dozens of other, better known winter resort destinations or getting existing tourist-centered businesses in the region to start cooperating. Naturally, money for investment is a concern ˆ but not as big a concern as in the past. NMDC Executive Director Robert Clark points out that the resort plan, which cost $200,000, was funded largely by private dollars, and said the private sector is committed to continuing those investments.
The skiing example
Supporters of the plan to boost tourism in the County are encouraged by the growth of a new recreational industry ˆ the cross-country ski centers in Presque Isle and Fort Kent, initially sponsored by the Libra Foundation. Ray Hughes is a commercial lender for TD Banknorth in Presque Isle who knows a lot about prospects for growth among existing businesses. As a volunteer, he has thrown his efforts behind pushing skiing as both a healthy activity for County residents and a key to their future economic success.
The first biathlon World Cup races ever held in Maine, in 2004, attracted wide media attention and were telecast live in parts of Europe. But succeeding seasons have brought even more high-profile ski meets and races, with even the winter just past rating a major success. "The competitors told us this was the best snow they'd skied on all winter," Hughes said of the Junior Biathlon World Championship held in late January that featured athletes from 26 countries. "Even when there was no snow in Presque Isle, the course held the snow and was manageable."
That event had a budget of $800,000 to pay for everything from nearly 200 area hotel rooms booked for competitors to 18,000 meals served to team members and volunteers, according to event director Tim Doak. But he estimates the spin-off economic impact at $3 million to $4 million.
In addition to the international youth biathlon, which had 300 contestants, the Aroostook courses hosted the Eastern High School competition for 275 athletes, and a stop on the U.S. Ski Association tour. Together, this winter's events were a bigger draw than the 2004 World Cup, and the area has also begun attracting off-season meetings such as the Biathlon Organizers meeting scheduled for June. The Nordic Heritage Ski Club also is branching out into warmer season events like mountain bike racing, and saw its first professional biking events last fall on the new trails.
To Hughes and Robert Clark at NMDC, skiing and other recreational opportunities answer the question of what to do in the region, and provide a focus for the type of large resort development now planned for other inland Maine locales such as Moosehead Lake, Brownville and Millinocket. "To be honest," Clark said, "this resort project is something we could have done 10 years ago. But now we're focused on it, and we think we can make it work."
A decade ago, before many of the major cutbacks in the wood-products industry occurred, people in the area were less likely to see tourism as an economic mainstay, he said. Yet he doesn't see any lingering effects of that attitude that would create conflict between encouraging more tourism while maintaining whatever industry Aroostook can still attract. "That never came up in all our meetings concerning the tourism plan," Clark said. "I don't think people from other parts of Maine realize just how much space there is here. You can drive for miles on a state road and not see a house, and you can take to the woods and hardly see a vacation home."
Making connections
But the "big bang" of a major new resort may not be the whole ballgame. David Versel, an economic planning consultant in Biddeford who worked on the tourism plan, frequently partners with Economic Stewardship on such studies. He said the Aroostook study bodes well for changing attitudes up north, but that tourism advocates will have to keep working on expanding existing expectations for the region's drawing power. "Everyone knows about hunting in northern Maine. Hunting is important, but it's mostly a few weeks in one season," Versel said. "[The Registered Maine Guides] may not believe it yet, but they're starting to see that more people will come to shoot moose and bears with cameras than with guns. And when you get to that point, you really are talking about a year-round economy."
He also said the area needs other infrastructure improvements beyond a destination resort. The County's shaky highway connections to the rest of the state are mentioned in the plan, and they remain a constant concern among County residents; the St. John Valley has long been pressing for a highway comparable to Interstate 95, which now ends in Houlton. "People recognize the need for infrastructure when they're building a new manufacturing plant, but they seem to think that tourism dollars should be free for the taking. They're not," Versel said.
But building infrastructure means a lot more than roads, he added. It involves creating connections between tourism businesses so they can shop for customers as a group and organize packages of common admissions for museums. For example, Versel pointed out that the national scenic byway website (www.byways.org) includes a description of Route 11 ˆ the county's second major north-south route along with Route 1 ˆ that winds some 90 miles through woods, small towns, and agricultural land. But the site offers no information on attractions along the way. "People who want scenic drives also want somewhere to go. There have to be highlights or they'll go elsewhere," he said.
On the other hand, there's nothing preventing people from choosing Aroostook if they have a good reason, Versel said ˆ not even the perceived distance from major markets. He's worked on projects in areas as remote as the Sandhills region of north-central Nebraska that have been successful as tourist draws. "If you can get them to come there," he said of the vast Great Plains, "you can get them to come to northern Maine."
One of the most successful examples of a rural region reinventing itself for tourism is Michigan's Upper Peninsula, which has branded itself as the "Great Waters" area astride three of the five Great Lakes. "The slogan was easy, but getting communities to cooperate was the hard part," Versel said. "They've been working on this for 50 years, and it was just in the last 15 years that it all came together."
Similarly, one of the five-year tourism plan's recommendations for northern Maine is to create a single theme for the entire county, replacing such past marketing campaigns as "The Crown of Maine," "It's Only Natural," and "Last Frontier of the East." Yet the report also says that the distinctive regions within the county must be recognized. Southern Aroostook around Houlton ˆ the central potato growing region ˆ the western interior with its vast forests, and the St. John Valley must all figure in tourism efforts, along with distinctive enclaves such as New Sweden and the Micmac and Maliseet tribes.
Clark said that NMDC this year plans to proceed with the branding idea, which the plan suggests should start with a statewide tourism summit. A marketing firm will be hired for the project, with the cost likely split between public funds and private contributions. Clark also hopes to get started soon on a central on-line reservation system for restaurants and lodging envisioned in the plan.
Across the international border in New Brunswick, a more organized approach to tourism is already evident, including integrated reservation systems, well-designed websites and tour packages, acknowledged Alain Ouelette: "A lot of it is about dollars, but it's also about organization."
The County's own efforts need to be closely coordinated, he said. NMDC is considering merging its tourism efforts with those of LEAD (Leaders Encouraging Aroostook Development), a group perhaps best known for its advocacy of better highways. At the Aroostook Partnership, Walt Elish said there's already considerable awareness that the county can't simply look within for its future. The 24 private-sector companies investing in APP include all the area's banks, energy companies like Dead River and Public Service Co. of Maine, the major provider of electricity. "They recognize that their own futures depend on attracting new investment, which is why they're willing to make a financial commitment," Elish said. "They need a rising tide for their businesses, too."
Supporters hope the new tourism plan will encourage further participation from area business. That plan also was finished "at a good time," said Elish, because the upcoming resort feasibility study could spark further interest in building tourism potential throughout the county.
A resort, however large, is not the whole answer, but it is the opportunity to build a "hub, spoke and wheel" model for tourism, said Elish, adding, "This is an 'experience northern Maine' opportunity. Whether you want to fly-fish, canoe the Allagash, mountain bike, ski or snowmobile, your experience ought to start here."
A resort plan may be the most noticeable push for tourism development in Aroostook when it's unveiled later this month, but advocates are hoping the attention the study receives, along with the goals outlined in the five-year tourism business plan, make it easier to transition from an industrial economy. "We had the option to wait and see what might develop on its own," said Elish. "And we decided that wasn't what we needed to do."
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