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OLD TOWN – These days, florist Brenda Festerman is getting a lot of requests for flower baskets filled with daisies, tulips and carnations that herald the change of seasons.
“It gives them a nice outlook that spring is coming,” she said Thursday afternoon.
For those who live or work in Old Town, though, any thoughts of spring likely were taking a back seat Thursday to news that the Georgia-Pacific Corp. paper mill – which accounts for about one-third of the city’s tax base – was closing.
The closure will have a ripple effect in town, from the schools attended by the children of millworkers and where spouses teach to the downtown shops.
“This place is going to be a ghost town” if the mill isn’t replaced, Iabasis, 38, a resident of the neighboring Penobscot Indian reservation, predicted as he picked up a sandwich Thursday afternoon at a Subway shop downtown.
Gary Dupray, owner of Gary’s Discount Center, which sells furniture, decorations, household items, tools and knick-knacks, said he already is starting to feel the impact. Sales began to drop off by about 25 percent two weeks ago when there were reports that G-P planned to close the mill that employs about 400 people.
People are getting scared and holding off making some purchases until they know more or things improve, he said.
“They want to wait and see what tomorrow brings,” said Dupray, who has run his store downtown for 20 years and has weathered shutdowns and cutbacks. The mill once employed 1,100 to 1,200 employees, he said.
Dupray said he expects it will get worse before it gets better, and sales could be off by 40 percent at his store before it levels off and improves.
Another downtown store owner, who didn’t want to be identified, said he too will likely feel the pinch from the closure and has a lot of sympathy for the workers. Some have mortgages and some are paying for college for their children. Most, if not all, are finding themselves without jobs.
With the news breaking hours earlier, the businessman said the reality of the closure hasn’t fully set in.
“We’re all shellshocked,” he said.
At Brenda’s Florist & Gifts, Festerman said she hadn’t heard of the closure but pointed out that she has a relative and many friends who work at the mill, and she’s concerned for them.
“There are a lot of good, hardworking people there,” she said.
Festerman, who opened her shop in August, isn’t sure how she will be affected but said she realized that flowers are more a luxury than a necessity and will take a back seat to other expenditures.
School department officials already were preparing for the impact early Thursday afternoon, hours after the news broke.
Old Town school officials are assessing what the shutdown will mean to students, staff and the bottom line of the budget being developed, Old Town School Superintendent David Walker said.
“Our first concern is to provide for the needs of those people of our school family,” Walker said Thursday from his office.
Losing a job can be stressful for family members, especially children, and counselors will be made available to anyone who needs them, the superintendent said.
“For young people, it can be a scary thing; they don’t understand what it means when Dad loses a job,” Walker said.
The school department also will look at ways to assist financially, providing free or low-cost meals, for example.
Meanwhile, with the mill accounting for such a large part of the tax base, the school department will be working with the city to see what, if any, changes will be needed in the budget, Walker said.
Throughout the community, uncertainty remained the word of the day.
Most of the millworkers at a local bar early Thursday afternoon didn’t want to comment on the news.
But one worker, walking his dog along the Penobscot River, voiced frustration at the closure and the fact G-P employees have been working diligently to make improvements only to be shut down.
After 25 years working at the mill and 21/2 years since the last shutdown, the man, who did not want to be identified, said he has had enough and plans to look elsewhere for work.
“I told my wife, this is it,” the man said.
Others haven’t given up just yet.
Dupray said that after years of ups and downs, he is confident that things will improve.
“I do believe that someone is going to stand up and buy the plant again,” he said.
State officials, addressing reporters at a press conference at the mill’s training center, also were optimistic, with Gov. John Baldacci saying that the mill was closing only “temporarily.”
Duane Lugdon, international representative of the United Steelworkers, which represents about 340 of the mill’s 400 employees, left the press conference confident that with the support of the state, the mill will resume in some fashion.
“There is light at the end of the tunnel, and we’re going to put this back together,” he said.
Millworker Daniel Bird was at the press conference and shared some of that hope, but more guardedly.
“We’re just cautiously optimistic,” said Bird, 48, who has worked at the mill for more than 26 years, outlasting layoffs and downsizing and owners such as Diamond International, James River and Fort James.
His optimism was tempered, he said, with the recognition that times have changed and that the paper industry faces increased competition from abroad where labor and paper pulp are cheaper. With the Old Town mill being one of the smallest mills in G-P’s stable, its future may not lie with a larger paper company bent on achieving economies of scale, but with a smaller company, Bird said.
Bob Sibley, 55, a retired contractor from Lincoln, was visiting Old Town’s downtown Thursday when the news broke. He had some advice for millworkers and residents worried about the future of the mill.
Sibley’s daughter and son-in-law work at the Lincoln paper mill and were there when it closed a year and a half ago, only to reopen, stronger and better.
“Keep your heads up even though it might not be so good now,” he said.
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