The 2007 Next list

The uniter

Alan Caron
President and founder, GrowSmart Maine, Yarmouth

Alan Caron took a risk inviting the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., to write a report on growing Maine's economy. The high-profile think tank was an outsider, and Caron, founder and president of Yarmouth nonprofit GrowSmart Maine, knew Mainers could have been skeptical.

But Caron, it turns out, was wise to seek outside opinion on Maine's economy. Released a year ago this month, the 140-page report, "Charting Maine's Future," has galvanized lawmakers and the public; been mentioned in over 800 newspaper stories and editorials; and been printed or downloaded 35,000 times. Caron, who has made 115 speeches this year, says he feels like he's started a statewide book club.

The Brookings report, which cost $1 million and a year's research to produce, has resonated because it incorporates ideas from all sides of the Maine economy. The report had high hopes, recommending the state issue $390 million in bonds to pay for research and development and environmental conservation, funded with deep cuts in government spending and an increase in taxes, such as the state's lodging tax. Lawmakers are paying attention, in the last legislative session using its suggestions for state policy. Caron, a Waterville native, has recognized that growing Maine's economy depends on bringing the state's factions together. "The only way we can move forward is an integrated vision," he says. "And that's what the Brookings report tapped into."

Gov. John Baldacci liked some ideas in the report, creating the Quality Places Council, a group devoted to preserving Maine's landscape and rural communities, and the Future Maine Prosperity Committee, which is charged with making long-term plans for Maine's economic growth. Those groups are expected to report to the Legislature next year. Baldacci also mandated an ambitious school consolidation plan that had its roots in the Brookings report.

But the big investments have been pared down: A proposed $200 million R&D bond, for instance, was reduced to $55 million. Voters will decide on that bond, and another $17 million bond for the Land for Maine's Future conservation program, in November. The Legislature also nixed raising the meals-and-lodging tax from seven percent to eight percent after some said it could drive visitors away.

Caron says he'll keep lobbying for bigger investments and a boost in the lodging tax. "We've had some friendly debates with the lodging and tourism folks, but that's going to come around," he says, "It's just a matter of time."

Caron is relatively new to his role as a statewide rabble-rouser. He started GrowSmart Maine in 2002, after working for 20 years as head of Caron Communications, a strategic-planning consulting firm in Freeport. GrowSmart originally focused on fighting sprawl — the rapid suburbanization that Caron saw strain local communities and harm the environment. He realized, however, that stemming sprawl would require tackling the state's whole tax structure and economy.

That ambitious task became GrowSmart's mission. In 2005, Caron enlisted the Brookings Institution for help, inspired by its 2003 analysis of Pennsylvania's economy. An analysis from Brookings, he thought, would be an unbiased, comprehensive guide for growing Maine's economy without sacrificing its economic advantages: its environment and rural communities.

Caron went to D.C. in 2005 to make a proposal to Brookings, which completes just one state analysis every few years. Maine was chosen over 14 other states, Caron says. After raising $1 million to fund the project, Caron traveled the state with Brookings researchers, holding 35 regional meetings, or "listening sessions" to grasp challenges Mainers face.

The report generated lots of publicity when it was released last fall, and Caron is working to keep it in the spotlight. In September, GrowSmart began airing its first television commercial, imploring viewers to visit the organization's website to read the report and sign petitions to legislators. On October 19, Caron is holding GrowSmart's fourth annual summit in Augusta, a conference that's expected to attract 800 to 1,000 people.

Caron intends to keep building support. He's only on year two of a five-year plan. "We're in this for the long haul," he says. "Some do a report, release it and see what happens. That's not what we're doing here."

Kerry Elson

Big man on campus

Bill Beardsley
President, Husson College, Bangor

Success at Husson College depends on economics. Since 1986, when Bill Beardsley took his post as the Bangor college's president, economics has been this educational entrepreneur's strongest subject. Using the basic tenets of for-profit business savvy, Beardsley turned this former business and secretarial school into one of the most boldly successful academic institutions in the state.

Maine students have recently shown their appreciation for a good bargain. While enrollment at schools like the University of Southern Maine is in decline, seats are hard to come by at relatively inexpensive institutions like Maine's community colleges. No school is benefitting more from the rush to save a buck than Bangor's private, nonprofit Husson College, where traditional undergraduate enrollment (meaning those students enrolled full time in daytime courses) has doubled since 2000. This year alone, the school will teach 270 more students than last year, or, as Beardsley explains in terms an English major would appreciate, like adding "the size of the College of the Atlantic."

Husson's main campus in Bangor teaches 2,150 traditional undergraduates, up from around 850 when Beardsley became the school's president 20 years ago. The entire school — with campuses in Bangor, Presque Isle, South Portland and Calais, and outreach centers around the state — serves close to 3,000 distance learners, commuter students and traditional students in 30 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs.

This year, Husson's steady expansion under Beardsley broke into a sprint: The school entered the final stages of the permitting process for its graduate pharmacy program and law school, both of which Beardsley hopes to launch in 2009. In July, Husson took over management of the Eastport boat school from the community college system, and earlier this year received a $1.5 million gift to establish the Calais campus.

Husson's success with, as Beardsley puts it, "capturing market share," is rooted in its president's obsession with providing affordable, career-oriented degrees to rural Mainers looking to better themselves without breaking the bank. To keep the school's tuition low, Beardsley elevates administrative penny-pinching to the level of art form.

Bill Beardsley's office is in the basement of one of Husson College's dormitories. A modest window positioned too high to crack allows distilled sunlight into the whitewashed office, and a dish-sized water stain colors a portion of the drop ceiling over Beardsley's head. Beardsley, 65, gave up his posh presidential suite — every wood-paneled, sun-drenched inch of it — about three years ago to make more room for faculty and academic programs.

If you want to succeed like Husson, Beardsley explains, stick to a budget. The school keeps its debt low and is judicious when it comes to expansion. When Husson does expand, as it is now with a $15 million meeting house and performing arts center, Beardsley typically attaches the new additions to existing buildings, which cuts his costs in half and means he can piggy-back on the older facilities' heating and water systems.

All of this frugality means the school can keep Husson's tuition at an economical $12,000 a year, which Beardsley says is critical for an institution known for teaching first-generation college-goers. No graduating student, he says, should start their adult life in more debt than the average price of a new car.

Twenty years ago, Beardsley took on a challenge when he took on Husson. He doesn't regret it. "Husson had a tremendous reputation of reaching out to rural Maine students and it was a private school that wasn't restricted by state appropriations," Beardsley explains. "We can be driven by the marketplace instead of by politics and that is a tremendous advantage in Maine, where it's highly politicized."

Sara Donnelly

Rethinking downtown

Eric and Carrie Agren
Owners, Fuel, Lewiston

Eric Agren recalls watching the sun slip behind the Chicago skyline from his deck one night several years ago. The skyscrapers glowed blue. Office windows blinked on. Motionless clouds absorbed the last of the light and seemed to burn.

That's when he made up his mind.

"My cousin did that painting," Eric says, pointing to a large canvas behind the bar of Fuel, the sleek Lewiston restaurant he owns with his wife, Carrie. After Agren snapped a photo of the sunset, he sent it to his cousin to recreate. The huge painting now dominates the front end of the restaurant. "It was the restaurant muse," he says.

But Lewiston at dusk couldn't be more different than Chicago. Here, as the day ends, streets empty out and stores lock up. Eric describes Lisbon Street in the old days as, "Nasty. Gross. Beat-up."

But the Agrens are trying to change that. And they've made extra investments to make sure their contribution to Lewiston's fledgling revitalization makes an impact. Not only did the couple nudge along an urban rebirth by offering a chic new dining room, they also renovated an art gallery in the same building as Fuel. They then donated Gallery 5 to L/A Arts, a nonprofit arts agency. The Agrens don't charge rent, and pay the bills and taxes on the space.

The duo offers a model for other entrepreneurs hoping to find success in neglected downtowns by mixing philanthropy, the arts and gourmet dining into one package. And they're hoping that more people follow their lead to remake a section of Lewiston that, according to the Agrens, still has a long way to go — but also has lots of potential.

Despite opening just six months ago, Fuel is nearly breaking even, Eric says. Most weekends are booked solid, and on weekdays the 75-seat restaurant does a full turn — all without a shred of advertising. Between 350 and 400 diners visit Fuel each week, buying entrees that range from $10 to $24. About 55% of the guests come from the area, and 45% travel from Portland and elsewhere to the restaurant.

Carrie says the dining room came out exactly as the two envisioned. The restaurant is painted an earthy, muted orange. French lithographs line the walls. Delicate lights cast a shadowy ambience. Wait staff in all black serve coq au vin, duck confit, filet mignon, escargot and frog legs. Although the place feels fancy, many diners come in jeans and sweatshirts. The Agrens don't mind. "I call it urban cozy," Eric says.

Eric, a Lewiston native who also works as a sales manager for U-Line, a Milwaukee-based maker of refrigerators and wine storage systems, learned about restaurants through the appliances trade. His first job was with his family business, Agren Appliances, an independent retailer in Maine started by Eric's father and uncle in 1978. During evenings out wining and dining company representatives, Agren would critique restaurants' d�cor, menus and service. (Eric says he even spent time volunteering in the kitchen of a French restaurant in Chicago.)

Eric and Carrie, a program manager at Unum in Portland, moved back to Lewiston in 2004. Carrie, a Kentucky native who has always maintained a corporate career, says her husband never had to persuade her to become a restaurant owner. "It's kind of like you're having a very large dinner party every night," she says. "Carrie is the consummate entertainer," adds Eric.

While jogging, Eric saw that Lyceum Hall on Lisbon Street was for sale shortly after moving back to Lewiston. Built in 1871, the 25,000 sq. ft., four-story former theater needed to be gutted, and its outdated electricity, plumbing and heating systems ripped out. The Agrens bought the hall and a 15,000-square-foot building next door for $275,000, and pumped a "significant" amount into the renovations, according to Eric, who declined to offer specific figures. And while he calls the investment a "huge risk," he and Carrie also have faith that it won't be in vain. "I can see how beautiful [Lewiston] is," says Carrie. The city could be reborn, she adds, "if people could embrace it and give it a shot."

Rebecca Goldfine

Local flavor

John and Brendan Ready
Founders, Ready Seafood, Portland

When Cape Elizabeth natives John and Brendan Ready left Maine for college in Massachusetts, both brothers heard plenty of fellow Mainers pan the idea of returning home after graduation. "There's no opportunity in Maine," they said, or "There's no real business in Maine," according to Brendan, 25, who graduated with a business degree from Stonehill College in Easton, Mass. "And that always hit us the wrong way. So we wanted to come back to Maine and grow something and really be able to share it."

John, 27 and a business graduate of Northeastern University in Boston, picks up seamlessly where his younger brother left off. "We wanted to make a difference," he says. "We wanted to be the people who were sticking their necks out, saying, 'Listen guys, there is opportunity here. We're going to lead the way. We're going to show you.'"

In just a few years, the brothers have done just that, in 2004 launching Ready Seafood, a wholesale lobster and seafood distribution business that last year netted sales of $10 million. From its headquarters on one of Portland's few remaining working wharves, Ready Seafood ships Maine lobsters all over the United States and to customers in Europe, and just recently shipped its first batch to Japan, John says.

Now, the brothers have set their sights on a more ambitious goal: To redefine the lobster industry, which has been largely unchanged for as long as Maine's lobstermen have sunk their traps to the ocean floor. Earlier this month, the Ready brothers launched Catch a Piece of Maine in hopes of adding value to the Maine lobster they and the lobstermen they work with catch. These days, lobstermen are feeling the pinch as costs increase for staples like fuel and bait while lobster prices have remained flat, Brendan says. "We felt we were working so hard and making money, but we knew there was a smarter way to reach more people outside Maine and New England, to really put a better spin on the industry and to add value to the product in a way that nobody else has," he says.

For $2,995 a year, a customer can buy a Maine lobster trap that will be fished by the Ready brothers or one of six other lobstermen. All lobsters caught in the trap throughout the season, which runs from May to December, are credited to the owner's lobster account, and the owner can call in a shipment at any time. (An average trap catches roughly 50 lobsters a season, John says, and each shipment comes with a pound of steamers, a pound of mussels and all the necessities — from butter to bibs — for a bona fide Maine lobster dinner.)

The recipient also receives a DVD about the venture, along with a card and photo of the lobsterman tending that particular trap.

John expects to sell memberships on 400 traps for the first season. As of Oct. 1, he says the business has sold 24 memberships without any marketing. The venture also will give 10% of profits to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Ready Seafood's neighbor on the waterfront.

Through Catch a Piece of Maine, the Ready brothers offer a example of how education and an entrepreneurial passion can instigate change — in this case, a new take on a traditional industry. The launch of Catch a Piece of Maine was a financial risk, costing between $35,000 and $40,000, and the brothers know their venture won't change the industry overnight. But they hope it's a model others use. "We decided: Let's be the pioneers, let's try something different," says John. "We realize this is going to be a long-term project, but you have to start somewhere."

Whit Richardson

Endurance man

Will Thomas
Executive director, Tri-Maine Productions, Portland

It took just an hour and a half in mid-February to fill the 500 spots for the fifth annual PolarBear Tri/Duathlon, an endurance race held in early May at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. Despite the Valentine's Day storm that dumped more than a foot of snow on Maine the previous day, lines were out the door at the three registration sites by the time sign-ups started at 5 a.m.

For Will Thomas, the 26-year-old executive director of Tri-Maine Productions in Portland, the sell-out was proof that his race – the one he launched in 2003 as a senior at Bowdoin — was on the map. "It's become this incredible event," he says. "It's a good indicator of where the sport's going now."

Founded in March 2006, Tri-Maine has become Thomas' vehicle for tapping into the booming interest in triathlon and other endurance races in the United States. The company this year ran five events in Maine — from the Lobsterman Triathlon in Freeport to its newest race, the Urban/EPIC held this summer in Portland — and helped organize two other races in Maine.

But beyond the growing demand for these kinds of events, Thomas wants Tri-Maine to showcase the locales where the events are held. Each race brings hundreds of outsiders to Maine. They come from Boston and New York and as far away as Alaska. And they bring their wallets, dropping cash in local hotels, restaurants and shops. Call it niche tourism or a sweaty brand of economic development, but Thomas' innovative efforts are perfect examples of how Vacationland can capitalize on its most marketable attribute — the outdoors.

"It's not just putting up signs and telling people which way to go," says Thomas of organizing triathlons. "It's about giving people something to identify with so they feel that they're part of something, whether they're in Bangor, Maine, or California."

Thomas was bitten by the triathlon bug after swimming, cycling and running his way to the finish line in a Cape Cod race in 1996. Since then, he estimates he's completed some 60 triathlons and other endurance events, including an Ironman USA event in Lake Placid, N.Y., that included swimming 2.6 miles, biking 112 and running a full marathon.

But it was during an oceanside ride in the fall of his senior year that Thomas had his first tri-biz epiphany — he would organize an event of his own, right there in Brunswick. "The whole bike ride back, I was thinking of ways to make it happen," he says. "It was one of those moments where you realize that something major just happened. I had this idea and thought, 'I don't know what this means or how this is going to play out, but I'm pretty sure this is important and I should not let go of this excitement.'"

The 2003 Ironbear was a modest success and Thomas was hooked. The reputation of that first race — renamed the PolarBear this year after Thomas received a cease-and-desist letter from the organizer of the Ironman races — continued to grow. The success of Tri-Maine's other races also helped kick-start the company's Urban/EPIC event in Portland, which debuted in August with 350 racers from 20 states. "It was wild, wild, wild," Thomas says of the Urban/EPIC event. "We had a huge turnout, great sponsors — everything about it was pretty spectacular."

Meanwhile, Thomas has bigger plans for Tri-Maine and its parent company, WillPower Enterprises LLC, which is "pretty much at break even right now," Thomas says. He notes that any profits are being pumped back into the company, which doubled in size to roughly $250,000 in revenues this year.

Some of that money is earmarked for MyRaceWorld, a social networking site WillPower is developing to capitalize on the obsessive nature of triathlon enthusiasts. The site, which is still under development, will let racers track times, connect with other athletes and compare results. Thomas also continues to court big-name, national sponsors like Zone Labs, the Danvers, Mass., nutritional company that sponsored this summer's Urban/EPIC event.

And though he admits his youth can make it difficult to convince sponsors to hook up with Tri-Maine — a deeper-voiced co-worker sometimes makes initial phone calls — Thomas says the race world has been very accepting. "The one thing I have going for me is that I have so much experience in the sport," he says. "If you've shown that you can talk the talk and walk the walk, people respect that."

Taylor Smith

Come together

Martin Grimnes and Lisa Martin
Founder of Harbor Technologies Inc., Brunswick, and executive director of the Manufacturers Association of Maine, Westbrook

When the Brookings Institution came out with its report on Maine's economy in October 2006, it created a great buzz around the term "industry clusters" — those sometimes-geographic concentrations of interconnected businesses that work under the rising-tide-lifts-all-boats theory.

But while the term may have been new to some ears, the concept was old hat to Martin Grimnes, founder of Harbor Technologies Inc. in Brunswick and president of the Maine Composites Alliance, and Lisa Martin, executive director of the Manufacturers Association of Maine in Westbrook.

Grimnes and Martin are two prime examples of forward thinkers in Maine who have eagerly embraced the cluster concept. Martin is spearheading an initiative to create a cross-industry aerospace cluster in Maine, while Grimnes has encouraged cooperation and investment in Maine's composites businesses, and supported efforts to ensure there's an educated workforce to fill composite companies' ranks. There's no promise that Maine will succeed in becoming an aerospace industry hub or a national player in composite technology, but the work Grimnes and Martin are doing in hopes of giving Maine companies a competitive edge deserve attention.

Grimnes has been involved in growing a composites cluster in Maine since the late 1980s, when he helped create the Maine Composites Alliance. And after losing Brunswick Technologies Inc., the company he founded in 1984 and grew into a $44 million business, to a hostile takeover by French company Saint-Gobain in 2000, Grimnes went right back to the composites industry. He founded Harbor Technologies in 2004 to manufacture composite docks and pilings.

The Maine Composites Alliance is among the industry organizations that worked with the state to form the North Star Alliance, which in February 2006 received a three-year, $15 million Workforce Innovation Regional Economic Development (WIRED) grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to support Maine's boat building and composites businesses.

Grimnes' most ambitious goal is to create a composites campus in the Brunswick industrial park where Harbor Technologies is located, including a lab and classroom for a full-time composites program for students from the nearby Maine Vocational Region 10 school. Composites companies in the park could share services and experience, or even materials or warehouse space. "There are some fairly significant benefits that it's hard to put dollars and cents on," says Grimnes. "But they're of huge value."

While Grimnes took the entrepreneurial road to where he is today, Lisa Martin has 18 years of economic and workforce development experience under her belt.

Since June 2006, Martin has spearheaded an effort to organize Maine manufacturing and related businesses into an aerospace industry cluster. The initiative, which in March received a $50,000 cluster enhancement award from the Maine Technology Institute, has an ambitious goal in its recently adopted strategic mission: To make the Maine Aerospace Cluster "the world leaders in aerospace manufacturing and position aerospace as a key driver of the Maine economy."

While there are a few large aerospace companies operating in Maine — the largest being Pratt & Whitney, which has a facility in North Berwick — there are dozens of small- and mid-size companies across several sectors, including manufacturing, composites and information technology, that do a myriad of specialized jobs for customers like Pratt & Whitney, Boeing, General Electric and the U.S. Department of Defense. Martin puts it this way: "Imagine you're flying in an airplane. Think about every facet of that airplane, whether it's a commercial airplane or private jet or military fighter jet. If you think about all the parts and components to put that together, that's what companies in Maine are making, from electronics to hydraulics to windows and lighting to the seats."

Many of those companies approached the association to get help breaking into the aerospace industry, which prompted the initiative. Some of the larger companies, like D&G Machine Products, a precision engineering firm in Westbrook, can land $8 million to $10 million projects on its own, Martin says. But if the companies — she currently has 65 on a list of those interested in the aerospace cluster — could coordinate and pool resources they could tackle projects in the $30 million range, she says. The problem is there's not enough coordination. "We have a number of companies doing work in this cluster," she says. "And companies know there are others doing this work, but nobody knows who or what."

The MTI grant, as well as a $122,445 co-investment from the business community, MAM and Coastal Counties Workforce Inc. in Brunswick, funded a survey completed this summer to identify the strengths, weaknesses and needs of Maine companies interested in the aerospace cluster. Needs cited include making sure companies have the technology to compete, workforce development and help identifying the various certifications required to do contract work in the aerospace industry.

Martin admits she's a "big picture person," but in 10 years she envisions Maine manufacturers organized to cooperatively tackle large aerospace projects, which in turn would attract further investment in the industry and help lure other big companies like Pratt & Whitney to set up shop here. "If you build it they will come," she quips.

Even though industry clusters may be seen by some as the economic topic du jour, people like Grimnes and Martin see the inherent value in interconnected businesses working together as collaborators rather than competitors, and will continue to work toward that goal. "We as a state and industry need to invest in ourselves," Martin says.

Whit Richardson

Bringing it home

Jett Peterson
Board member, Eastport Port Authority, Eastport

The stores along Eastport's Water Street are open. Their doors are propped, their rainbow colored "Open" flags flap crisply under a cloudless afternoon sky, their newly painted facades gleam. This would be a shopper's paradise, if only there were shoppers. But today, like so many days this year, Eastport's Little Downtown That Could is desolate.

That's not acceptable to Jett Peterson. Peterson, the co-owner of the Weston House Bed and Breakfast and a member of the Eastport Port Authority, lobbied for a decade to shatter downtown's eerie silence with cruise ships — those floating fountains of disposable income. In September, after two visits to a Miami sea trade show, the advice of a cruise consultant and two Peterson-hosted dinners schmoozing cruise line owners, the Eastport Port Authority and the city of 1,600 finally threw the first proper reception for a cruise ship here since the late 1990s. When the 98 passengers of the Cruise West "Sprit of Nantucket" ship stepped ashore that sunny Sept. 17 with visitors from as far away as Tanzania, Peterson welcomed them. So did about 40 townspeople, a representative from the Passamaquoddy Tribe and the live Celtic music of Eastport's Schuth Family Quartet. The cruise director later called it the "most sincere and excited" welcome he'd seen in his six year career with small cruise ships.

Standing on the now empty pier weeks after that triumphant arrival, Peterson — eyelids dusted with pearlescent lavender shadow, lips glossed pink — surveys Canada's Campobello Island across Passamaquoddy Bay. She set her sights on getting a cruise ship up here because she wanted to introduce more shoppers to the place she calls her "San Francisco on the East Coast." But Eastport is fiercely protective of influence from away, and some weren't so crazy about a 78-year-old, born-and-bred Virginian ushering outsiders by the dozens into town. Many worried, like so many in close-knit Maine communities do — if they come, will we change?

Indeed, Eastport's cruise crisis could have happened in almost any small community in Maine. Tourism is the biggest industry in the state, but most visitor dollars are spent in traditional magnets like Portland, Freeport and the midcoast — places that have long been accustomed to the sometimes overwhelming influence of tourists. Peterson's relentless push to slice a piece of that revenue pie for her hometown without compromising the culture of her city sets an example for community leaders statewide.

Peterson says she had a tough time rounding up locals to meet the cruise line presidents when they stopped in to evaluate Eastport. Also, the welcome had its hitches: The Eastport Port Authority recently spent $35,000 on a new platform and gangway ramp, but failed to fix irregularities in the surface of the Fish Pier that Peterson says caused two people to trip, one swiftly enough to swell up her wrist. (The Port Authority will smooth over the pier for next season's ships, according to Peterson.)

Despite the rough spots, Eastport's recent foray into cruise coddling went pretty well. "I think that, as we get going, things will go off without a hitch," she says.

Next summer, the Pearl Seas Cruises, a subsidiary of American Cruise Lines of Connecticut, will sail out of Bangor and stop in Eastport once in July and once in September (Cruise West is moving to the West Coast this year and will discontinue its East Coast routes). Peterson plans to continue pushing for more visits. But she knows none of her effort has staying power until Eastport realizes it can be a worthy stopover without spoiling what makes it unique.

"I really think [cruise ships] are vital, not only because of the economic value but because the town feels good about itself," she explains.

Sara Donnelly