I work with young people, mostly from Maine, who are learning about the innovation process and principles. Although I have taught primarily liberal arts, three years ago I decided that young people, particularly students like mine, needed to learn innovative ways of shaping their work and their world, and that giving them these skills would help develop the state economy.

Maine’s economy is famous for its concentration of wealth and growth in the south around Portland. It is also famous for the struggles of the “other Maine” (where I live): the yearly rounds of belt-tightening, a status quo of sustained decline evidenced by school consolidation, the disappearance of local industries, and the difficulty for college graduates to find meaningful jobs in our region.

The present historical moment offers us economic crisis, but as economic realities change, it can also offer us opportunities for sustainable growth. One of those opportunities is articulated in the Plum Creek “concept plan” for its landholdings in the Moosehead Lake region. Although I am neither a developer nor an environmental scientist, I not only love Maine’s outdoors, but I care about the future economic well-being of the young people I teach. My sense is that Plum Creek’s concept plan is a unique and fortunate opportunity that we should be willing to engage, and to do so creatively.

Such an investment of capital in the Greenville area is necessary to maintain a sustainable community in that region today, just as it was necessary in the past when lumbering and tourism first made the region populous. Perhaps initially the best work will be construction jobs for local and out-of-town workers, but these workers will express a new economic confidence by spending money at local businesses.

As dollars circulate through the local economy, there will be the opportunity to enhance the economic infrastructure of the region. It will become feasible to bring comprehensive broadband Internet service to the Greenville region, which in turn will make it possible for entrepreneurs to live in the region and, working online, to reach global colleagues and customers.

After graduation from college, young Mainers need a space for their entrepreneurial work, and the Plum Creek concept with its 30-year trajectory provides the opportunity for the Greenville region to be such a space. Without investment in local institutions, local schools are disappearing and the local hospitals are losing the capacity to serve residents.

The proposed residential and recreational developments will make Plum Creek an economic partner to the local community, creating an opportunity for Greenville and Rockwood to resist economic decline and enjoy a renaissance. For example, the effects of MBNA’s investment in midcoast Maine illustrate what can occur in the Greenville region – MBNA’s investments provided the initial catalyst, but the midcoast economy has become self-sustaining.

Some of the concept plan’s detractors insist on a return to pristine wilderness, a condition that sustains wilderness communities, but not a human community. They forget that what the present landscape also represents is economic decline.

What is now needed is for the Land Use Regulation Commission to take the advice of experts on the technical aspects of every element of the plan, but they also need the give the go-ahead to the initial rezoning proposal. Opponents to the plan have not come up with an alternative for enriching the region and providing a hopeful future for young Mainers who want to stay in the Greenville region and create a future. At best, opponents offer wish lists for Plum Creek investments to a community in crisis.

Since 2005, Plum Creek has engaged in meaningful negotiations and revisions of the concept plan on the basis of thoughtful criticism from the local community. The plan has many supporters in the environmental movement, including the Appalachian Mountain Club and The Nature Conservancy. If this plan is not the right one, we surely need another plan that offers an alternative capital investment and a similar potential to create many openings for a sustainable future. Opponents of the plan have had since 2005 to develop such a plan. We need one now.

Margo Lukens teaches English and is director of academic programs in innovation at the University of Maine.