Ellsworth making pitch for L.L. Bean call center

ELLSWORTH – Since L.L. Bean announced it would not establish a new call center at FirstPark business center in Oakland, Hancock County’s largest municipality has joined the ranks of several Maine communities vying to be the home of the proposed facility.

State officials have said that the Augusta-Waterville area remains the focus for choosing a site for the call center, but officials in Bangor, Brewer and Sanford have made public their interest in having the possible 800 seasonal jobs the call center would provide located in their cities.

Ellsworth City Manager Stephen Gunty said Tuesday that Micki Sumpter, the city’s economic development director, and Michele Gagnon, the city’s planner, have met with local business leaders for marketing advice and are working on a pitch to draw the company’s attention toward Ellsworth.

“We want to point out to L.L. Bean why Ellsworth is a good match for their needs,” he said.

L.L. Bean canceled its plans in Oakland last month after T-Mobile of Moses Lake, Wash., announced that it intends to build a 700-employee call center at the same business park. L.L. Bean officials said they were concerned with the availability of enough workers in the area to fill the jobs both companies expect to create.

Attempts Tuesday to contact Sumpter and Gagnon were unsuccessful but Gunty said that Ellsworth, which already has an L.L. Bean store on High Street, is well-suited for such a call center.

Because much of Hancock County’s business activity happens in the summer, when tourists crowd into Acadia National Park and the county’s many picturesque oceanfront communities, the area work force is well suited for handling the high call volume of L.L. Bean’s busy season at the end of each year, he said.

According to Maine Department of Labor information listed on the state’s Web site, 1,800 people, or 6 percent of the county’s nearly 30,000 working-age residents were unemployed last month.

The presence of Acadia on nearby Mount Desert Island also meshes well with the company’s focus on active outdoor lifestyles, Gunty noted.

The 17 Island Explorer buses that provide free transportation in Acadia and on MDI every summer each prominently feature the L.L. Bean logo, a result of a $1 million gift the company is donating over a four-year period to help pay the bus system’s operating costs.

The promotional materials being developed by Ellsworth to recruit L.L. Bean also will be used to try to draw other companies to the area, according to Gunty.

The city manager said that though housing may be in short supply in the county as a whole, the city has a good education system and good potential for housing development in its more than 90 square miles of area.

Gunty said if L.L. Bean does not want to build a call center in Ellsworth but instead is interested in a nearby community, the city still would support the company’s plans.

“Jobs are jobs, no matter if they are inside your borders or outside your borders,” he said. “Economic development lends itself to a regional approach.”