MBNA move gives Camden a chance Firm to transfer 360 employees, leaving complex open to new leases

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CAMDEN – The ties that bind credit-card lender MBNA and Camden are as old as the company itself.

Co-founder Charles Cawley, who retired late last year, holed up with investors in an annex building of the Whitehall Inn on High Street in the early 1980s to plan the company that would become the world’s second-largest creditcard lender.

Now MBNA is moving its Camden work force – 360 people – to offices in nearby Belfast and Rockland.

While the ties between town and company will be lessened, observers of the local economy believe the impact of the job shift will be minor. Some suggested in interviews this week that the availability of MBNA’s gleaming office complex, which the company intends to lease to others, provides the town with an opportunity.

Camden has certainly figured in MBNA’s recent history in a big way.

Cawley’s grandfather operated businesses in Camden and Belfast and lived in Lincolnville. The grandson eventually built a large home in Camden, which he maintains.

And it was Camden where MBNA first landed in Maine, bringing in what seemed, in 1993, like a token 75 jobs. Today, the Wilmington, Del., company employs 17 percent of its work force, some 3,700 people, in offices around Maine.

But reaction this week to news that the company, following Cawley’s retirement, is charting a new, leaner direction – including consolidation – has been muted, said Andy McPherson, director of the Camden-Rockport-Lincolnville Chamber of Commerce.

“No one’s running around saying the sky is falling,” McPherson said. Yet most merchants agree there is an inevitable impact when 360 fewer people are walking around downtown.

Ken Bridges, an analyst with the state Department of Labor, said that when jobs are moved to offices within a 20-mile radius – true in this case – most will stay on with the company, and the economic effects to the region are minimal. “A few people will quit, but most will make the move,” he said.

The town won’t lose property taxes, but will lose some personal and business property taxes, McPherson noted.

Both McPherson and Bridges said the availability of about 140,000 square feet of top-notch office space, which could be converted into commercial and even residential units, is an opportunity for the town.

Bridges believes new uses in the old mill would bring a net gain of jobs to the area.

McPherson, who is meeting with community and business leaders next week on the issue, said the available space gives the town a chance “to choose what we want to be.”

The fact that MBNA was consolidating its offices was a well-known secret around town for a year, he said.

In the fall, the company announced it would lease part of its offices to the Owl & Turtle Bookshop and the Camden Riverhouse Inn. Six months later, leases were secured, McPherson said, with Star Child, a clothing store; Know Technology; the magazine Maine Boats & Harbors; and an architectural firm.

Had the company sought outside help in marketing the facility, it might have filled more of the offices, he said.

“MBNA chose not to partner with us,” McPherson said, when the Chamber approached the company last year. He hopes that will change.

McPherson expects it will take one to two years to fully lease the former mill.

Greg Dugal, director of the Maine Innkeepers Association and former Camden Chamber director, noted that the tenants were all existing Camden-area businesses.

“The real challenge will be to get new people to come in,” he said. “I think it’s going to take awhile.”

With the midcoast landing a designation as a Pine Tree Development Zone, some commercial properties in the area, including the former Apollo tannery in Camden, offer hefty tax incentives to businesses, Dugal said, making it a renters’ market.

McPherson said MBNA declined an offer to have its Camden offices included in the economic development zone.

McPherson said some of the possible users for the mill are a convention and conference center, technology-based firms, a restaurant, and an artist co-op. Condominiums might even be possible, he said.

“You need a good anchor restaurant,” Dugal said, or a lodging facility.

High-end clothing stores, including chain stores, might also work in Camden, he said, or a call center.

John French, who grew up in Camden, operates an auto repair business and has served several terms on the town Select Board, noted what MBNA had done to transform the town over the last 10 years.

“They’ve been a great neighbor for Camden,” he said, rattling off some of the projects the company has paid for: a skateboard park, teen center, new sidewalks and period street lights, renovating the Camden Opera House and the Camden Public Library, and buying a new ladder truck for the Fire Department.