CALAIS – Passamaquoddy tribal leaders were stunned last year when voters rejected their plan to build a racino Down East, but now the tribe is working with real estate developers on ideas for economic development projects in the heart of the city.

The tribe holds an option on a 700-acre parcel where they had planned to build a multimillion-dollar racetrack and casino near the city’s future third international bridge. In November, the plan was rejected in a statewide referendum.

“What the racino taught us is that we can’t sit back and be reactive, we’ve got to be pro-active and that’s what we’re doing,” Pleasant Point tribal Chief Rick Phillips-Doyle said Wednesday. “So we are making contacts with public officials and hopefully to identify some private developers, investors, those types of people.”

The construction of a new multimillion-dollar bridge and U.S. customs house, now under way in Calais, may provide significant opportunities for business development on the parcel.

Each year millions of cars cross the existing two international bridges that connect Calais with neighboring St. Stephen, New Brunswick. The new bridge, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year, is expected to generate even more traffic.

“The [Maine Department of Transportation] traffic count on that third bridge is somewhere between 3 [million] and 4 million cars, and that garners the attention of people who are in the real estate development world,” John Richardson, commissioner of the state Department of Economic and Community Development, said Wednesday. Richardson was in Calais on Tuesday night along with tribal members talking about development opportunities.

“That area is ripe now for development,” Richardson said. “So we brought up a number of developers who have ties to the state of Maine and outside the state of Maine to look at creating the kind of economic activity that creates that critical mass [that is needed].”

Richardson said the developers along with tribal members had dinner Tuesday night with City Manager Diane Barnes.

“I wanted to introduce her to some of the people and also to talk about some of the opportunities that are going on,” Richardson said.

The commissioner said it was a fruitful meeting.

Barnes agreed. Although she did not address the specifics of the conversation, she did say she liked the developers. “I was impressed with the fact that they were passionate about their plans to develop this area,” she said.

Phillips-Doyle did not identify the types of businesses the tribe was hoping to bring to Calais. “We just have general ideas right now,” he said. “We want to work on them and make them more specific and we’re working that way.”

But Richardson said future development might include restaurants and hotels, service stations and possibly a truck stop – “the kind of retail that I think will be beneficial to the region given the relative value of the Canadian dollar versus the American dollar.”

“So we are seeing more of an influx of the Canadian residents,” he said. “In an anecdotal way they come over here to buy gas so I’m assuming they could buy much more. Calais has traditionally been a service center. … And we need to provide as many opportunities for our residents in Washington County as we can for our Canadian friends.”

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