Rumford area attracts pilot biz program
Linda Walbridge concedes she’s never been a shrinking violet.
The economic development director for Oxford County, Walbridge doesn’t see how anyone can effect change if they aren’t willing to shake the status quo. So when she heard a national pilot program for a new economic development project was likely targeting Brunswick to help it recover from its base closure, she dialed into a conference call with the project organizers.
“I just asked, ‘Why are you going to Brunswick? You will make much more of a splash if you come to the River Valley,’” she says.
The question was posed to Emile Paradis, executive director of a nonprofit business assistance group called Fast Forward Restart, and Mike McClellan, the program’s Maine director. The program intends to offer free intensive business coaching and assistance for two years to 30 select businesses. In other Fast Forward projects, participating businesses saw their profits rise an average of 15%.
Walbridge made an impassioned pitch. “She was extremely vocal,” says McClellan. And ready with her facts: The Rumford area was experiencing unemployment rates of 18% versus the state average of 8% and the national average of 10%; it was in the midst of several initiatives to spur development, all bootstrap operations started by locals; no one was lending them a hand, which meant if Fast Forward succeeded, all the glory would be theirs.
“Everyone was going to Brunswick to help — they’d been recommended to us — it seemed like a lot of people were competing in that environment to get people’s attention,” says Paradis, a former Mainer with ties to Old Town who bases Fast Forward Restart in Atlanta. “Linda said, ‘Listen, no one’s here helping us. Come here, help us succeed and you’ll have done something noteworthy.’”
Her pitch worked. Fast Forward has applied for a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration and is seeking matching funds for the two-year program, which will be based in Rumford and Mexico. McClellan says he’s pretty confident the funds will come through and anticipates an April launch. A leadership committee — of which Walbridge is a member — is forming, a cross section of business and civic leaders to guide the project and maintain its momentum once the pilot phase is over.
Walbridge says there’s been no shortage of people willing to be on the leadership committee, nor of businesses wanting to participate. Within 12 hours of a presentation before the Rumford Board of Selectmen, there were phone calls from interested businesses, she says. To be considered, a business has to take a 45-minute online survey and make a commitment to a training session followed by a series of exercises intended to be completed in 90-day chunks. Working with the Fast Forward staff, businesses will develop mission statements, goals, objectives, strategies and personalized plans to achieve them. The Maine project is one of four undertaken by Fast Forward, with companion projects under way in New Orleans, Atlanta and Michigan.
“We’re unique because we’re not program driven,” says Paradis of the Fast Forward model. “A lot of service provided to small business is program driven — ‘we have a program and it will help you.’ But our process identifies the issues critical to the success of the business and directs available resources to them. There are a lot of great resources out there, but what we often hear from businesses is that no one is listening to us.”
The group also brings an outsider’s perspective and a network of national contacts. McClellan says , for instance, the Fast Forward project in Atlanta has contacts with Coca Cola, which is headquartered there. The group plans to ask the corporation to consider filling some of its paper needs with products from the NewPage Corp. mill in Rumford, he says.
In Katrina’s wake
Fast Forward got its start in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when Paradis and several other people with business backgrounds grappled with providing meaningful assistance to businesses devastated by the hurricane. Tapping into combined resources that included planning and organizational consultants, financial advisers and staffing experts, Paradis and his group developed Fast Forward’s hands-on approach and recruited its first group of businesses. Lauren Addison, owner of Pied Piper Pest Control, was a member of that first group. The New Orleans businesswoman told Mainebiz that she and her husband weren’t even sure they could continue their two-person operation after the hurricane’s devastation.
“I know Katrina was unique, but our business has grown to be four times what it was right after Katrina,” says Addison, who now employs seven. “I think Fast Forward can only do good for you.”
Addison says having a one-on-one business coach for an hour every week made all the difference. Ironically, the coach was the same man Addison had hired before Katrina, but she was no longer paying his $500 a month fee — Fast Forward was.
“One of the biggest things for us was to regain our perspective,” she says. “When you’re bogged down in the day to day, you can’t see the future. But the program made us focus on what we wanted to be and move us in that direction.”
Paradis says he expects the Maine operation will be an experiment on several levels. All of Fast Forward’s previous projects have been in urban settings, and in response to a specific, traumatic event such as the hurricane, or in the case of the Michigan project, the demise of the auto industry.
“With Rumford-Mexico, it’s more the area has been in a 30-year malaise,” says McClellan. The area has been heavily reliant on the NewPage paper mill for jobs and taxes. At its peak, the mill employed 3,000; today it hovers around 800, says Walbridge.
The hope is the success of the 30 River Valley businesses will provide a working model for other rural-based Fast Forward projects, says Paradis.
“It’ll be a challenge, but that’s what intrigues us,” says Paradis. “It’s clear there is a lot of engagement and passion in that community.”
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