Ex-Jacks owner hoping to regroup Hutchins plans to pay team’s debts

Now known as the former owner of the Bangor Lumberjacks baseball team, Charles “Chip” Hutchins says he is devastated but “regrouping” while trying to salvage something in the wake of the Lumberjacks’ demise.

“This has been a hard pill to swallow. I’ll swallow it and try to move forward. I love this area and I’ll try to do things in the future to help this area,” Hutchins said Friday. “Basically I was devastated and heartbroken that the league came down very hard. They had some issues and one of them was us having troubles and whether we were going to sell the team, and I guess they reached a decision that it just wasn’t going to happen.”

Formerly the Northeast League, the Canadian-American (Can-Am) League owners voted to terminate Bangor’s league membership during a Wednesday conference call while Hutchins was still attempting to sell the team.

The franchise’s dissolution came a week after the Lumberjacks named a new manager and less than 24 hours after signing their 25th player. Manager and former hitting coach Chris Carminucci was still in Connecticut but due to travel to Bangor next week. Three players and fan favorites – catcher Brad Hargreaves, first baseman Mark Burke, and pitcher Jerry Long – had agreed to come back to play for Bangor. They were not notified personally about the team’s demise and are now free agents who can sign with any team that makes them an offer.

“I’m sorry that it happened. Those are outstanding guys, three of the best guys we had on this team,” said the 32-year-old Hutchins.

Hutchins’ business experience includes serving as the vice-president of administration for Alternative Energy Inc. of Bangor. He has also been president of Gopher Hill Communications, the former owner and operator of Bangor radio stations WABI (910 AM) and WWBX (97.1 FM); and the primary financial backer of Engineered Materials of Maine.

The felling of the Lumberjacks has left several local businesses and individuals hanging: people who have either lost money or have not been paid for services and/or products they provided the Lumberjacks during the last two seasons.

“It’s devastating for all of us, most of all me,” said Hutchins, who paid a $575,000 franchise fee to the league for the team. “It’s a deep impact for me.”

Larry and Theresa Ayotte of Brewer run one of those businesses affected. The Ayottes own and run Terelar Advertising Productions, a design firm run out of their home. The Ayottes did a rush job on the Lumberjacks’ 2004 team program which sold at the ballpark for $2.50 per copy.

“They came to us about three weeks before the first home game and were desperate to get it done quickly and it was nowhere near as complete as it should have been as far as the ads,” Larry Ayotte recalled. “We had to do a lot of legwork. Basically, a production like that, about 62 pages, would take a month or two to do. In this case, it got really compressed. We did it in a week and got it to the printer a week before it was due.”

Ayotte said the response was very positive from the Lumberjacks’ staff. Then the Ayottes sent them the bill.

“We sent the bill and got no response. We talked to several Lumberjacks staff members, but never Chip,” Ayotte said. “I left messages and sent letters and I have not heard or seen anything from him.

“To this day, I still haven’t talked to him. Finally in March of this year, we hand-delivered a letter to his office, but he wasn’t there. His receptionist accepted it and signed for it.”

Hutchins said businesses like the Ayottes’ will be paid.

“We’re going to correct all that. This is my home and I intend to address all those issues,” Hutchins said, preferring not to put a dollar figure on the amount of money the team owes or a number on how many people are owed. “I won’t get into specifics on that. I don’t have a number and will deal with each one individually.”

The number for the Ayottes is $4,400 with $416 of that being the total amount of late fees incurred since they began kicking in 90 days after the original bill was mailed out.

When told of Hutchins’ comments regarding outstanding bills, Ayotte laughed.

“The only reason he’s talking to anyone right now is because he has to,” said Ayotte, who is filing small claims court proceedings to recover his money. “If he wants to write me a check, I’ll go there and pick it up right now. I have no problems with that. What scares me about what he’s saying is he’s probably going to try to negotiate and get this down. At that point, I’d say ‘I’ll see you in court.'”

Hutchins said he was very close to a sale to a Japanese group headed by Hiro Masawa, the father of a former Lumberjacks player and a businessman who has helped start up minor league baseball in Japan.

“We were right up to almost signing on the dotted line. We were really that close. We’d worked most everything out,” Hutchins said. “We actually had an agreement on the financials, which was mostly the hard part. We actually didn’t have a formal contract, but the issues were location and other fine points.

“The last sticking point right up until the last day was what they were going to do going forward, and they wanted some guarantees about staying in Bangor or moving the team.”

Hutchins said after continually wrestling with himself over selling the team, he finally decided it was undeniable.

“They don’t really say anything when you buy the franchise. They hope you’re not going to lose $100,000 a year, but our losses were significantly more than that,” said Hutchins, who admitted he was told to be prepared for, and expected to have, losses. “It was just that the magnitude was significantly more than I thought it would be.

“We thoroughly explored all our options, but I determined I couldn’t withstand losses like that another year.”