By Rommel Ojeda
The bandstand just off of Penobscot Avenue was built, like so much else in Millinocket, by the Great Northern Paper Co. Soon after the mill closed, in 2008, the lights that lit the bandstand each Christmas, bringing the townspeople together for the holidays, also went out.
In the winter of 2014, Sean Dewitt and his mother Nancy, who both have deep roots in Millinocket, decided it was time to turn the bandstand’s lights back on. The younger DeWitt, who is now a social entrepreneur but who worked for years as a management consultant and as an engineer, put together a fundraising website and, in just one day, raised over $650 for the Christmas lights.
What started as a project driven by nostalgia became the catalyst for an effort to rekindle Millionocket’s economy. Soon after raising money for the bandstand, the DeWitts launched Our Katahdin, recruiting the daughters and sons of former mill workers—Dave DeWitt, Sean’s father and Nancy’s husband, had worked at the mill for 42 years.
This younger generation of Millinocketers, most of whom had left the town for job opportunities elsewhere, banded together with a small group of newcomers to the town. Together they’ve forged a vision of a new, more diversified economy for Millinocket. No single company was ever likely to provide employment for the entire town again; their hope was to bring a variety of new businesses to the area.
“A lot of entrepreneurial-minded people see business opportunities while the cost is so low,” says Steve Golieb, a newcomer to Millinocket and a local businessman who says he was lured to the town by both its natural beauty and low cost of living. (Related content: Can CLT help revive Millinocket?)
Video: Looking to the future
The economic-diversification effort began in earnest when Our Katahdin purchased the former 1,400-acre mill site for $1.00, in January 2017, in the hope of using it to recruit new businesses to the town. Over the past three years, Our Katahdin has raised over $90,000, most of it via internet fund-raising campaigns, for such projects as a broadband initiative aimed at wiring the town for internet and an industry development plan aimed at luring small- and medium-sized businesses to town.
In what was the group’s first major success, last February, Our Katahdin signed an agreement with LignaCLT Maine, a North Carolina producer of Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) and other timber products, to build a manufacturing facility at the old mill site. It is expected to produce 100 jobs over five years.
But the new generation of Millinocketers insist that the town can no longer bank on the wood-products industry alone. Rather, they insist that reviving the local economy will depend on luring a variety of businesses, from technology-based companies to ecotourism.
At the forefront of the diversification effort was Matt Polstein, who moved to Millinocket in the early 1980’s. “Tourism has an opportunity here to coexist with whatever industrial opportunity the forest continues to provide,” said Polstein who started out teaching kayaking and canoeing before founding the New England Outdoor Center and Twin Pine Camps, a family oriented resort located on the shore of Millinocket Lake. Today, NEOC employs up to 125 people during the summer season. (Related content: Matt Polstein: Millinocket’s ecotourism champion)
Yet, where Polstein saw trees and the potential for recreation, former mill workers saw pulp. Many old-school Millinocketers feared that ecotourism was incompatible with their plans to lure a paper mill back to the town, according to John Davis, the town manager.
In 2000, Polstein was elected to the town council, where he served for nine years, a sure sign that the idea of diversification had gained at least some acceptance locally.
John Hafford and Jessica Masse’s vision for Millinocket is, by contrast to Polstein’s, decidedly technological. The founders of DesignLab, an internet-based graphic and web design company, were the first to wire their company for high-speed Internet. The company serves customers from all around the world. Although Design Lab employs only four people, they believe that high-speed internet could bring other digital entrepreneurs to the town.
Hafford and Masse launched DesignLab in 2004 and moved the business to Millinocket about a decade later. At the time, the company had only a dial-up modem, which was incapable of transferring large files. Before installing high-speed internet, Hafford would have to transfer a physical hard drive via bus to his editor who, after editing the files, would send them back with another bus.
Husband and wife both grew up in Aroostook County, two hours north of Millinocket. Now they are among the first newcomers who are raising a family in the area. The Katahdin region’s natural beauty and recreation opportunities brought them to the town; it’s also what makes the area ideal ideal for raising their two young children, they say.
High-speed internet was also important to Matt Delaney, a librarian who came to Millinocket from Syracuse, NY just two years ago. Delaney is now the director of the Millinocket Memorial Library, which closed in late July, 2015 when the impoverished town council had to cut its funding. Delaney has revived the library with the help of a team of volunteers and received a grant of $500,000 from the Generation Foundation to renovate the library. He also wired the library with high-speed internet and provides free hotspots on Penobscot Avenue, the town’s main street.
Steven Golieb, who was born in Manhattan, is one of the newest entrepreneurs to move to town. He is the owner and founder of Edibles Wilds, LLC, a small health food company specializing in sustainable, eco-friendly products, which he runs out of the Turn the Page Bookstore and Wine-Bar in downtown Millinocket, which is open seasonally. Golieb rented the building, which sports a giant blue logging truck on its roof, from the Pelletiers, an old local logging family and the stars of the reality TV show, American Loggers.
A serial entrepreneur who has tried multiple business ventures in Oregon and Utah before coming to Maine, including some that failed, Golieb sees great potential in the town. Golieb recently bought a house at a foreclosure auction for $1.00. He also owns another building and plans to remodel and rent both.
Like Polstein, Golieb faced skepticism from the locals when he first moved to town; some saw him as a “trust-fund baby,” he admits. So no one was more surprised than Golieb when, in November of 2017, he was elected to the town council. As the youngest member of the council, Golieb is full of ideas for modernizing the town, including a new recycling program that would, if approved, dramatically increase both recycling and composting, and could require the town to invest in a pick-up service. “It might make people angry,” concedes Golieb.
One thing the newcomers all share in common is a commitment to being engaged in the civic life of the town. To revive Millinocket, they all say, it is necessary to rebuild a sense of community. Golieb’s Facebook page features announcements made by other local businesses and organizations like Our Katahdin. Similarly, Masse and Hafford allows any local group that asks to hold a meeting in their elegantly appointed conference room, in DesignLab’s historic storefront headquarters on Penobscot Avenue.