🔒We take a look at 2011’s most notable business news.

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2011 started with a partisan flavor, as the GOP captured not just the Blaine House, but both houses of the state Legislature. A, umm, colorful governor captured headlines early on and a clean sweep of Augusta got the revolving doors started.

From there, we reported on energy projects, business developments, land deals, new laws and new faces. What didn't change much: an economy still stuck in neutral. Here's hoping 2012 gets us out of the spin cycle.

Energy

What's coming?

Natural gas generated lots of buzz in 2011, as Kennebec Valley Gas Co. and the town of Madison both pitched pipeline projects through central Maine (though voters nixed the town's project). Bath Iron Works partnered with Maine Gas Corp. to bring the fuel to its shipyard, and the Woodland Pulp mill in Baileyville is converting to gas. Central Maine Power introduced thousands of its customers to the smart meter, raising a ruckus among those concerned with health and privacy issues. And there's been no slowdown in the number of wind farms being pitched across the state, with First Wind's Oakfield project getting a boost from the town in the form of a TIF agreement, and its Bull Hill project earning regulatory approval. Wind power opponents, though, are as vocal as ever…

What's going?

Regulators' and residents' concerns led two developers, First Wind and Highland Wind, to pull their state applications. An approved Clifton wind farm is getting pushback from local farmers, and Carthage area residents are fighting a project by Saddleback Ridge Wind. San Diego-based International Wood Fuels scrapped its plans for a wood pellet plant in Burnham, citing a chilly reception from the state.

What to look for in 2012?

Expect more frayed nerves over CMP's smart meter upgrade and ongoing pushback against wind farms. Meanwhile, Ocean Renewable Power Co. will probably launch its full-scale tidal turbine in the waters off Eastport if it gets federal approval. Also expect to hear more about the company's offshoot work in Alaska and Nova Scotia as it positions itself to be a global tidal power player. More biomass systems at companies and institutions around the state will likely come online, as stimulus- and Efficiency Maine-funded projects are finalized. And we're hoping for some real traction on the recently announced clean-tech corridor, which could lure high-tech green firms to Brunswick Landing and beyond.

Real Estate

What's coming?

Possibly new uses for thousands of acres of north woods snatched up by a pair of billionaires. In 2011, land aggregator Roxanne Quimby bought more acreage with the dream of opening a 70,000-acre national park — if she can overcome local opposition. John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media Corp., bought 1 million acres in Maine and New Hampshire, nudging Ted Turner out of the seat of largest landowner in the United States. Malone told The Land Report magazine he sees real estate as "a pretty decent hedge on the devaluation of currency." For now, he intends to maintain the sustainable forestry operations on his Northeast holdings.

While Quimby's and Malone's forest tracts remain relatively quiet, a site south of them is producing some noise. Construction of the $412 million hospital in Augusta began this summer. The 192-bed, 640,000-square-foot MaineGeneral Medical Center is being funded with $280 million in bonds the hospital sold earlier in the year, plus donations, and will open in 2014. Also, in Bangor, residents voted 3-to-1 in May to go forward with building a $65 million arena and convention center to replace the old Bangor Auditorium. That project, now under way, will open in September 2013.

The former Brunswick Naval Air Station is now Brunswick Landing, home to a growing cluster of technology-based businesses, including Resilient Tier V Corp. and Molynlycke Health Care. Still unresolved: ownership of the land under 702 units of base housing owned by developer George Schott. As of press time, Schott was negotiating with the Midcoast Reuse and Redevelopment Authority over purchasing the land.

Farther south, developers have proposed a $100 million, privately funded development for scruffy Thompson's Point in Portland. They want to build a hotel, office building, parking lot, Red Claws basketball arena, convention center and concert hall (two of the plan's backers are principal Red Claws owners, Jon Jennings and William J. Ryan Jr.). The city approved a $31 million tax break for the project.

What's going?

The state's traditional forest-products industry and related paper operations continue to ebb. The existing Augusta hospital will be closed once the new one is open. And an underutilized lot in Portland on the Fore River might never be the same again. Its transformation may spur more activity on that side of the city.

What to look for in 2012?

The housing market is expected to remain weak, both in new starts and home sales, with little change in prices. Also, John Malone told The Land Report he wants more land in the Northeast and is eyeing a large parcel that would double his forestry holdings. Meanwhile, in November, East Millinocket residents voted 513-132 against supporting a park feasibility study for Quimby's plan, setting up opposition for the park proposal in 2012. U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, Sen. Olympia Snowe and Sen. Susan Collins have come out against the study, according to the Bangor Daily News. To rally behind Quimby's plan, state Rep. Cynthia Dill, D-Cape Elizabeth, formed a pro-park group called Friends of the Maine Woods.

Tourism

What's coming?

Portand's preparing to become a serious tourist magnet. For one, the city's hotel scene got more crowded last year. The Eastland Park Hotel was purchased by RockBridge Capital, which says it's planning extensive upgrades, possibly including a ballroom over what is now a small city plaza. The Portland Regency announced it wants to invest almost $1.1 million in hotel renovations, perhaps in response to the Eastland's threat and to a Hampton Inn that opened nearby this summer. Hopefully, the food in Portland is good enough to lure all the tourists the city can now accommodate.

If the tourists do come, they'll arrive at a bigger, fancier jetport. The $75 million expansion at the Portland International Jetport was completed in October, with a new food court, departure gates, security screening and sky bridge. The jetport says the upgrade is expected to attract a new carrier, likely Southwest Airlines, to Portland this spring. And, the city's $6 million megaberth, which opened in September, will allow even more massive cruise ships (how much bigger can they get?) to deposit tourists into the Old Port.

Finally, the two-week Biathlon World Cup blew in and out of Fort Kent and Presque Isle last winter, bringing about 140 athletes from around the world and drawing 25,000 to 30,000 visitors to these two northern outposts. The races, organized by the nonprofit Maine Winter Sports Center, generated as much as $10 million for the region. It'll be back in 2013.

What's going?

Mt. Abram's ski lodge in Greenwood was destroyed by a fire last summer. The ticket area, store, cafeteria, restaurant, restroom, retail store, utility rooms and offices were destroyed. But, in time for the ski season, the Rubb Group in Sanford built one of its steel fabrications at the mountain base to serve as the new lodge, the Bangor Daily News reported.

Elsewhere in the ski industry, Sugarloaf's old chairlifts are history. A state investigation determined that human error and maintenance problems, on top of high winds, contributed to the derailment of a 35-year-old chairlift that dropped eight skiers 30 feet into the snow below.

Swardlick Marketing Group in Portland closed this spring, several weeks after state officials asked for a company audit. Swardlick handled Maine's tourism advertising in 2009 and 2010 and was having trouble paying its suppliers, according to Gov. Paul LePage's office. The company had been in business 30 years.

What to look for in 2012?

The long-anticipated passenger train to Freeport and Brunswick will start running in the fall of 2012. Since receiving $38 million, mostly in federal stimulus money, The Northeast Passenger Rail Authority has been building Downeaster tracks between Portland and Brunswick. The service will offer two daily round-trips between Brunswick and Boston.

Technology

What's coming?

More funding for tech startups. The Maine Technology Institute, a publicly funded nonprofit that finances emerging businesses, changed its funding structure in 2011 to make more money available to innovative companies. One of the changes enables fledgling entrepreneurs to apply for $5,000 grants, awarded monthly, to help them get their ideas off the ground. This TechStart grant is designed to boost early endeavors and is smaller than the previously smallest seed grant, which MTI also increased, from $12,500 to $25,000. The first round of TechStart recipients included a lab that's developing worm-culture technology, a company designing a more efficient wind turbine, and a business that's creating a manufacturing blueprint for its anti-microbial, wood-fiber cloth.

And more businesses will have high-speed Internet access. The Three-Ring Binder project — a two-year plan to expand broadband access across Maine — added 500 miles to the fiber optic network this year, building it out from Eastport to Dover-Foxcroft and up to Aroostook County. The project received $25.4 million in stimulus money in 2009, with $7 million provided by investors in the private company overseeing the project, Maine Fiber Co.

What's going?

After nearly two decades advocating for the technology industry in Maine, TechMaine collapsed this year. The trade group's membership dwindled 20% in the last two years as member companies went out of business or dropped their fees during the recession, according to Board Chair Stephen Hand. TechMaine closed just a few months after hiring Executive Director John Spritz, who says he wasn't aware of any financial troubles before taking the job.

What to look for in 2012?

The new Maine Clean Tech Corridor project, an idea dreamed up by E2Tech, the University of Maine and the New England Clean Energy Council, could be the bait to attract more clean-tech investment and tech companies to Maine. The idea is that by fostering a greater regional network of clean-tech companies, the state can pull in firms that might otherwise overlook opportunities in Maine. For instance, a Boston-based company that can't afford MIT lab space might be attracted to cheaper alternatives at UMaine — if it knew about them. Or a manufacturing company could move to Brunswick Landing rather than wrangle for limited space in Hartford.

And a new TechMaine could rise from the ash. Stephen Hand told Mainebiz he's confident a new tech trade group will emerge with a different vision for supporting the industry. And more of Maine will get high-speed Internet when Maine Fiber Co. builds out 600 more miles of its fiber-optic broadband network next year, reaching as far as Madawaska, Rumford and Standish. The project should wrap up by next autumn.

What's coming?

Continued fallout from the turmoil in the industry that started in the fall of 2008. Aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act sparked a swipe-fee debate that prompted Bank of America to announce it was enacting a debit-card user fee, which unleashed a storm of competitors — including many Maine-based banks and credit unions — promising they'd never do the same. BoA soon thereafter ditched the $5 fee. Bangor Savings Bank made a splash by nearly tripling its SBA-backed loans, to more than $14 million, leveraging greater availability of SBA financing courtesy of the federal Recovery Act.

Coastal Enterprises Inc. received $5.5 million from a Wachovia Wells Fargo program to help finance job creation in rural areas, an award expected to help CEI leverage other private and public sources to create as much as $40 million of additional lending and investing capacity. And the state received a $13 million boost from the Small Business Jobs Act for loan programs within the Finance Authority of Maine and the state's Small Enterprise Growth Fund.

Putney Inc., a pet pharmaceutical company in Portland, has closed a $21 million financing deal to develop its generic veterinary drugs, bolster sales and marketing and address operational and working capital needs. And MaineGeneral Medical Center has sold more than $280 million in bonds to finance a new hospital in Augusta. The state sold more than $108 million in general obligation bonds in June, marking the first time since 1990 a bond sale was conducted on a competitive basis.

Mortgage rates remained low throughout the year, but weren't enough to prod a sluggish housing market out of the doldrums. In December, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled against holding mortgage giant GMAC in contempt for signing off on home foreclosure notices without thoroughly reviewing them, citing lack of precedent for contempt charges arising from bad-faith affidavits.

After debuting a couple of years ago in Portland at entreverge, pitch contests to encourage entrepreneurs gathered steam in 2011. The Camden-based Juice conference awarded $150,000 in in-kind services and funds and the Launch L-A contest awarded $100,000 of the same.

TD Bank moved into its customer service operation after spending $16 million to renovate its 60,000-square-foot space in the Auburn Mall. The Savings Bank of Maine changed its name to Bank of Maine three months after it emerged from federal scrutiny for unsafe practices and low capital ratios. Meanwhile Northeast Bancorp sold its insurance division in transactions totaling $9.7 million.

What's going?

Support for Maine's $5.3 billion NextGen college savings plan. Chicago-based Morningstar downgraded the plan from above average to below, citing regulatory issues surrounding how Merrill Lynch advisers sold it.

Consumer financial security. Bankruptcies are on the rise among the well-educated and relatively well-heeled. Nationally, bankruptcy rates among people earning more than $60,000 annually spiked 66% over the last five years, according to research by the Institute for Financial Literacy in South Portland, and the filing rate by degree-holders jumped 20% from 2006 to 2010, while Americans 45 and older saw a jump of 19%.

To jail, perhaps. Several banks and credit unions had unfortunate brushes with the law. A former Atlantic Regional Federal Credit Union employee pleaded guilty to stealing more than $500,000 from the Brunswick-based institution; a former Great Falls Regional Federal Credit Union teller was indicted on a charge of embezzling more than $10,000; and a former employee of Camden National Bank will spend nearly three years in jail for embezzling $750,000 over several years.

What to look for in 2012?

Maine Technology Institute revamped its seed and development loan programs to fund a greater variety of business and commercialization services. And workers' comp rates went down not once, but twice, in 2011, declining first by 3.2% and then 3.8%, which is expected to save employers $13 million in premiums in 2012.

Trade

What's coming?

New markets for Maine manufacturers who reported a good year, thanks in part to the weak U.S. dollar. Trade missions led by the Maine International Trade Center to Southeast Asia and to South America are expected to spark more trade for Maine exporters of seafood and manufactured goods. And a growing demand for disease-free dairy cows has opened a sea route for pregnant Maine cows to find homes in Near- and Middle-East countries.

An effort to create a global intermodal transport operation for Bangor, Searsport and the port of Searsport took off in 2011.The proposal for a logistics hub is a public/private partnership. And a new division of Portland-based Atlantica Group is focusing on the intersection of commerce and politics to help businesses in parts of the world where political unrest, protectionist policies and unstable economies complicate transactions.

What's going?

Pulp and paper products. Forest products are still among the top of Maine's exported commodities, but shipments have slipped. Wood pellets, though, are expected to make some gains as exports; the port of Eastport is preparing for the additional volume by building a conveyor system designed to handle pellets.

What to look for in 2012?

More interest from developing countries such as Brazil and India in Maine products. A delegation of international business leaders toured several of Maine's technology companies in September, expressing interest in the state's growing renewable-energy sector and specialty veterinary industries.