Convention center study

Credit Coastal Acadia Development Corp. with having a good idea and the courage to pursue it. The Hancock Country organization looked at its demographics, low wages and strong but seasonal businesses and wisely concluded the Ellsworth area needed to act on its own to strengthen the county economy.

To that end, CADC is reviving a well-worn but still viable notion: Build a convention center in northeastern Maine, and the people and dollars will come.

The concept is tantalizing. Properly executed and promoted, a convention center development would extend through dormant winter months a visitor season that now runs from June to October.

Once a three-month commercial window for restaurateurs, motel operators, craftsmen and retailers, the Maine tourist season is nibbling on the edge of winter, as leaf peepers, cruise ships and retirees make the state a fall destination.

Construct a facility to lure the business, says Richard Malaby of Coastal Acadia’s executive board, and your area becomes a prospective venue for the convention industry, which also is seasonal, September through May l. The timing is perfect for businesspeople, especially those in the service sector, and it complements the existing flow of visitor traffic.

Malaby, proprietor of Hancock’s Crocker House Country Inn, and other members of the group, aren’t just talking about the potential of this industry, they’re doing something about it. The nonprofit organization has parlayed a $25,000 grant from the Economic Development Administration, a total $10,000 from public and private sources and funds from the state Department of Economic and Community Development into a $50,000 study of the convention center concept. A consultant will be hired early in 1997 to perform the work, and come May, the CACD should have the definitive report on the feasibility of the project.

Hancock Country is a microcosm of the best of Maine. It offers the coast, Acadia National Park, easy access to quality medical services in a network that extends to Bangor, retail shopping, and Ellsworth, Bar Harbor and other communities that are uniquely, wonderfully, Maine.

But as Malaby and spokesmen for regional development groups from Caribou to Machias, Greenville and Bangor have pointed out, there is a chronic shortage of good-wage jobs in this part of Maine. Depending on the locale, this is exacerbated by the seasonal nature of the employment. This has been the great frustration in northeastern Maine: The missing piece in its remarkable quality of life is a shared sense of economic opportunity.

CADC is taking the initiative, but other communities should do more than watch or offer moral support. Like many of the businesses that contributed to the study — including Bangor Hydro and a number of banks — and Eastern Maine Development Corp., which provides Coastal Acadia’s support staff, this study should have a regional perspective.

A convention project that might be questionable if its resource base, political support and focus is only Hancock Country, could be a solid investment if it drew from the broader community of northeastern Maine.