P.I. draws interest from N.B. firm

PRESQUE ISLE – A New Brunswick telemarketing company is coming to Presque Isle next week to survey the available work force, possibly leading to a new call center in central Aroostook County.

Connect North America will hold four sessions Monday and Tuesday at the Maine Department of Labor Career Center, according to Walt Elish, president and CEO of the Aroostook Partnership for Progress.

Connect North America is one of several companies the APP has been reaching out to for jobs in Aroostook County. He hopes it could fill the void left when Bank of America closed the former MBNA branch offices in Presque Isle and Fort Kent.

He said the company has been to Aroostook County once and they liked what they saw.

Connect North America, a provider of customized customer relationship management solutions, was formed in 1992 in St. Stephen, New Brunswick. It also has a center in Fredericton, New Brunswick, the provincial capital.

“They will be looking at the level of interest in their company and services,” Elish said Tuesday by telephone from New York. “I am hoping they will get a good response.

“It’s a good company and they are indicating they are looking at 150 full-time and 150 part-time jobs,” Elish said. “This is a more diligent phase of the work they started when they first came to Aroostook County.”

The company is looking to open a contact center in the United States. Elish said they are looking at opening a facility the first of the year, if all goes well.

Elish is hoping for a better indication from the company when officials are in Aroostook County.

“It’s a fact-finding mission for both parties, the company and people looking for jobs,” Elish said. “They are having a job fair, inviting potential applicants to come in and learn more about their project and their company.”

Elish said the company is not quite like MBNA, which was an outbound center selling credit cards, but Connect North America does make outgoing calls for business and also takes incoming inquiries from customers.

Elish said the company has not decided on a locale. One of the facilities they are looking at is the former MBNA site in Presque Isle.

“The MBNA building would almost be a turnkey operation for them,” Elish said. “If they chose another site, it would mean more of an investment to open.”

He said the company is not looking at the Fort Kent MBNA site.

Elish said his group is still marketing the Fort Kent site.

The APP thought they had a company for the Fort Kent site a month ago, but the company postponed its decision.

“We were very disappointed in that,” he said. “We are talking to another company that will be making a decision sometime in the next month.”

That company also is looking at other sites in Maine, and that could make Fort Kent a more difficult sell, Elish explained.

Elish said he was in New York on Tuesday promoting both MBNA sites.

He said both facilities are great, it’s just a matter of finding the right company that needs that kind of space, and having northern Maine meeting its needs.

He said both facilities are still on the national market.