Journey from the pole to polyester

This began as a ripping yarn of the Arctic, of high adventure at the Top of the World. It ended up a tale of struggling Maine businesses trying to deal with government. Either way, it’s about stuff that’s frozen.

Let’s begin, as promised, in the Arctic. A week or so ago, an acquaintance tipped me to a new report by the Office of Naval Research which finds that by 2015 global warming will have melted the polar ice cap sufficiently to create open sea lanes nearly year ’round. This long-term climate change, ONR concludes, will have profound repercussions in national security, diplomacy, ship and aircraft design, environmental policy and, given the sudden shrinkage of distance between ports in North America, Europe and Asia, commerce.

Given that Maine already is fairly close to the Arctic – uncomfortably close, some say – my acquaintance wondered if this commerce angle could be of benefit to its ports and if the state’s seaport strategies should be adjusted accordingly. I wondered, too, so I called Skip Rogers, local manager for Federal Marine Terminals, the company that operates the city-owned Port of Eastport.

He says polar shipping is a big deal, one that shipping lines and governments have been working on for several years. However, due to the rather rude way the Canadian Maritimes jut out into the Atlantic, it is not likely to do all that much for Eastport or other Maine ports. He says the big deal for Eastport is the re-establishment of the Calais Branch and the return of freight rail to the port. For more information on that, he refers me to John Sullivan, director of the Eastport Port Authority.

Mr. Sullivan says re-establishing the Calais Branch is a big deal, but due to the $80-million cost and state government’s current policy of moving with the speed of an especially lazy glacier when it comes to transportation improvements in northern Maine (OK, he didn’t put it that way) and its apparent inability to decide whether this rail bed ought to be used for rail or as a hike and bike trail, it’s not something Eastport should count on for the next several lifetimes. The big deal for Eastport in this lifetime is the Gates plant. Talk to City Manager Bud Finch.

Mr. Finch says that when Gates Formed-Fibre of Auburn – they turn used soda bottles into things like automobile trunk liners and floor mats – opened a plant in Eastport back in 1989, they did so with the help of a tax-exempt bond. When Gates closed the plant last year (citing ruinous energy costs, a fact that may explain why Gov. King’s assertion in his State of the State address last month that Maine had the nation’s most competitive electric rates failed to generate much in the way of applause), it left 50 people out of work and blew gaping holes in the city’s water, sewer and tax revenues.

But Gates also left a vacant 50,000-square foot building for which the port has an urgent though temporary need as a warehouse, lest it lose crucial cargo from its most important customer, the Domtar paper mill in Baileyville, to competing ports in Canada. Gates, Mr. Finch says, would love to lease the building to the port but wording in the bond agreement prohibits it. In other words, a city in a region suffering the state’s most extreme economic distress has many vacant building no business wants to use and one vacant building a business wants to use but can’t.

So I call David MacMahon, president of Gates. The prohibitive wording actually is one word -polyester. For reasons no one can explain, a tiny clause was put in that in that 1989 bond restricts the use of this building to the manufacture of polyester fiber.

Both Mr. MacMahon and Mr. Finch have been banging their heads against the wall for a good six months trying to get some high-level state assistance in sorting through the regulatory maze that envelops tax-exempt bonds. The most help they’ve gotten so far is the advice that perhaps Gates should just pay off the bond. I’m no CPA, but when Mr. MacMahon describes the difficulty he’d have with coughing up in excess of $500,000 to get maybe $10,000 in rent, I catch his drift.

So I phone the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development and get a call back from Commissioner Steven Levesque. He reiterates the suggestion that Gates clear away the old bond and start fresh. He also assures me that most places in Maine an empty building like that would get filled pronto. He even wonders if Gates couldn’t just lease the building as is and see if anybody complains. At this point, I’m thinking just give me a bottle of Wite-Out and five minutes alone with that bond agreement.

I’m all ready to wrap this saga up with an observation to the effect that – to paraphrase the old “can’t get there from here” crack – there are places in Maine from which you can’t get anywhere, but then I get call from Judy Cuddy, who runs Sen. Susan Collins’ Bangor office. Ms. Cuddy says the senator is aware of the situation is ready to do anything necessary at the federal level – a waiver, an amendment, whatever is both reasonable for Gates and expeditious for Eastport. I don’t ask, but I assume the senator draws the line at clandestine activities involving Wite-Out.

This is good. At least it’s a start. And who knows, maybe state government now will bring the full powers of its economic-development, financial and legal expertise to bear on this problem. After all, polyester’s tough, but it’s no North Pole.

Bruce Kyle is the assistant editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News.