As a seasoned executive with Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, Kenneth Hews knows opportunity when he sees it.

“Certainly health care has been a great driver of the economy in this area,” Hews said this week during an interview in his office on the top floor of the Cianchette Building, a new five-story medical office building, the first to be built in the Brewer Professional Center.

Over the decades, Bangor and Brewer have had to adapt to a changing world. At the same time, the loss of population to outlying bedroom communities has put more pressure on both cities to beef up municipal infrastructure and services.

If there is a bright spot on the two cities’ economic horizon, the nation’s burgeoning health care industry could be it.

Health care’s rising tide bodes well for Bangor and Brewer, said Hews, EMHS executive vice president.

“I look at it as a regional issue,” said Hews, who has been with EMHS for 36 years. “This whole region could be perceived as a major hub for health care.”

Bangor is home to two major hospitals, Eastern Maine Medical Center and St. Joseph Hospital, which have spun off related development in both cities.

“Nationally, health care is such a vital part of our economy,” Hews said, citing an article published in a recent issue of BusinessWeek. The article, which generated buzz on both sides of the Penobscot River last week, stated that since 2001, the health care industry has added 1.7 million jobs to the national economy, offsetting losses in manufacturing and retail and other softening sectors.

This has been the case locally.

An analysis of where those jobs were created puts Maine at the east end of a national “Health Belt” of states in which health care has been the major source of job growth over the past five years. The belt stretches through New England to New York and Pennsylvania, across the Midwest and through most of the South.

“So, yes, we are confident in the [Bangor-Brewer] economy,” Hews said, which, despite wild swings in the nation’s economy, has remained relatively stable.

“It never really booms, but it never really busts,” Hews said.

Rod McKay, Bangor’s community and economic development director, said that careful planning has been the key to making sure the city of Bangor doesn’t keep all of its eggs in one basket.

“We’re very diversified in terms of the economy, so we’re kind of resistant to ups and downs,” he said this week.

Bangor the service center

Bangor has been the region’s center for commerce, education, health care, and government and professional services since its heyday as the “Lumber Capital of the World” in the early to mid-1800s. Its service area extends well beyond the 14-community metro area, stretching north to Aroostook County, northeast to Washington County and to parts of the Canadian Maritime Provinces.

The lumber boom brought sawmills and related businesses. Railroads linked the Queen City to points north and south. Though the lumber boom went bust in the mid-1800s, a variety of the things that drew people to Bangor, namely core services such as financial, legal and commercial institutions, remained.

Those services continued to sustain Bangor even after the Great Fire of 1911, which swept through downtown, destroying many of its wooden buildings and houses and forcing the city to rebuild.

Bangor transformed itself again in 1942, when Dow Air Force Base arrived, and again when the base closed in 1968, taking with it its military population and $29 million payroll.

Though a setback, the base closure paved the way for the development of Bangor International Airport, a General Electric manufacturing plant, and city industrial and business parcels.

Interstate 95 was built in the 1960s. The Bangor Mall was built in 1987, giving rise to a thriving retail corridor that includes Hogan Road and Stillwater Avenue. The mall area today supports more than 3.2 million square feet of existing and pending commercial development with more than 2.5 million square feet of it retail.

Bangor shifted yet again when it was chosen as host for the National Folk Festival from 2002 through 2004. The coup opened city leaders’ eyes to the possibilities of the creative economy, a strategy that combines art, culture and education to attract such entrepreneurs as architects, artists, actors and accountants.

“These are people who can live anywhere,” Sally Bates, a city economic development officer said last week in an interview at City Hall.

Because such work can be done virtually anywhere in the world, choosing a place to set up shop often comes down to quality of life, an area in which Bangor believes it can compete “because we’ve got it all,” Bates said.

Bangor has seen growing numbers of galleries, entertainment and performance venues, ethnic restaurants and shopping – all within minutes of such outdoor recreational areas as the Bangor Waterfront and the City Forest. Brewer’s offerings along those lines are growing, too.

Hews makes that point when recruiting medical professionals from outside Maine.

“People find it a good place to live,” he said. “One of the selling points is that housing is less expensive, there are four wonderful seasons and all kinds of recreation from the mountains to the sea and the lakes.”

The most recent wave of development involves gambling. Bangor became Maine’s first gambling town when Penn National Gaming Inc. opened last November Hollywood Slots at Bangor in the former Miller’s Restaurant on Main Street. The racino is thriving and eventually will be replaced by a larger, permanent facility across Main Street from Bass Park, home of Bangor Raceway.

Brewer updates its image

Smaller Brewer, across the Penobscot River from Bangor, evolved in a much different manner.

Like Bangor, Brewer’s early years revolved around the lumber industry, namely shipbuilding. Brewer was famous for making bricks and then paper, all of which lent Brewer a reputation as a rowdy mill town.

“Brewer was where the poor people lived,” Brewer Economic Development Director D’Arcy Main-Boyington said this week. “The [company] owners lived in Bangor, and the workers lived in Brewer.”

Brewer still is working to shake off its blue-collar roots.

“It began to change 30 years ago, but the perception is what’s lagged,” Main-Boyington said. “It’s more diverse today” with housing and commercial options ranging from affordable to upscale.

“Now it’s not only OK but advantageous to have a Brewer address,” Brewer City Manager Stephen Bost said.

“We’ll never be a Bangor, but just because we’re next door, it doesn’t mean we have to be in their shadow,” Main-Boyington said.

To that end, Brewer is in the midst of carving its own niche in the burgeoning healthcare industry, and the centerpiece of that effort is the Brewer Professional Center, a 72-acre biomedical business park atop Whiting Hill.

The result of a partnership among the city, EMHS and Cianbro Corp. of Pittsfield, the park ultimately will have four medical office buildings. The first was completed two years ago. It houses administrative and support staff for EMHS and its hospital in Bangor.

The second building, if the state issues the necessary “certificate of need” this fall, will house EMMC’s Cancer Care of Maine unit and the newly formed Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health, a joint venture of EMHS, the University of Maine and The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor.

The initiative was unveiled in January by Gov. John Baldacci. At the same time, he announced the creation of undergraduate and graduate programs in biomedical science at the University of Maine.

Since the announcement, an estimated 60 medical and related firms have expressed an interest in working with the institute, Main-Boyington said.

“It’s a very important project,” the Brewer official said. The idea is to put research done at Jackson Lab to work in Maine.

“Applicability [of the research] – that’s always happened somewhere else,” she said, adding that the lab is working to address health issues common to Mainers, including cancer, diabetes and obesity.

Brewer’s era as a paper mill town came to an abrupt end in January 2004, when the Eastern Fine Paper mill closed, putting 400 people out of work.

“We moved very quickly so we were confident we are going to see something happen,” Bost said. Had Brewer not already taken steps to diversify, the mill closure “would have been a large disaster for us to deal with rather than a challenge.”

After a failed attempt to reopen Eastern Fine as a paper mill, the city took the building on and embarked on an ambitious redevelopment plan. Last month, North Carolina-based Neimann Capital LLC was tapped by the city to clean up, restore and turn the mill into a mixed-use complex of apartments, shops and a marina.

“They are $65 million serious,” Main-Boyington said. “It’s very exciting.”

“This will really reinvigorate the entire city, but also South Brewer,” Bost said.

Hanging in

Though Eastern Fine isn’t coming back, Brewer remains a manufacturing town. It is home to corporate residents including ZF Lemforder, Brewer Automotive Components and Trans-Tech Industries.

Bangor also lost some of its manufacturing base with the departure two years ago of its Osram Sylvania plant, but the sector otherwise remains relatively healthy. Besides such standbys as GE, the city is seeing new manufacturers pop up, including Hallowell International LLC, a startup company gearing up to make low-temperature heat pumps.

Despite the ups and downs, BAC Plant Manager Andy Fitzpatrick thinks manufacturing could continue to play a big role here.

“I’m not ready to throw in the towel by any means,” he said this week.

Fitzpatrick is well plugged in to local and state manufacturing circles. He said he’s been hearing a great deal about efforts to attract research and development, biotechnology and other cutting-edge industries to Maine, but little about preserving the traditional manufacturing jobs that sustained the region for decades.

That, he said, begs the question: “What are you doing to protect us?”

“Maine has one of the most competitive work forces in the nation,” he said, citing Maine workers’ loyalty, dependability and attention to detail. Also in Maine’s favor are educational institutions willing to provide whatever training is needed to keep skills sharp.

“We’re challenged,” he acknowledges, citing the tricky logistics of getting the Toyota suspension components BAC makes to assembly plants in Kentucky, California and Canada. Then there’s the relatively high costs of electricity and heating.

“So do you make excuses or do you affect what you can affect?” Fitzpatrick said.

BAC has chosen the latter route. To stay competitive, the plant has taken such bootstrapping measures as changing the plant’s halide lights to less expensive fluorescent ones, and putting the lights in less-traveled parts of the building on sensors so they automatically turn off when not needed.

The plant also involves all of its workers in the fight to stay competitive. BAC has quarterly meetings to brief workers on how the plant is doing financially and in terms of production and other measures, how the cost of gasoline and oil could affect sales and, lately, how Ford Motor Co.’s financial problems could affect the Brewer plant.

“No secrets, I guess. We all need to be on the same page,” Fitzpatrick said.

The parts made at BAC came full circle last weekend, when Down East Toyota owner Ed Darling brought some vehicles, including a Corolla and a RAV4, to a BAC gathering so workers and their families could see the components made at BAC as part of the finished product.

A little more atmosphere

Though both cities have invested heavily in their infrastructure and business attraction activities, at least one local merchant thinks something is missing and has some ideas about how to create it.

Paul Cook is a downtown Bangor property owner and manager who two years ago next month opened the Antique Mall & Marketplace in a vacant downtown storefront. It contains two levels of booths offering everything from trinkets and small collectibles to fine art and furniture, with a coffee bar nestled into a front corner.

“I was in [the Old Port area of] Portland last Thursday and while I was there, I spent a lot of time looking at what works there and why I think it works,” Cook, a native of Lubec, said during a recent interview at his downtown antique mall.

“I tried to translate that in my own head and to figure out how could I bring that to downtown,” he said.

Here is what he concluded about how places like the Old Port and Boston have made themselves so attractive to so many people:

“It needs to be an experience,” he said. “When you go to the Old Port, it’s a nice experience. There’s not just one thing to do, there are eight or 10 activities that make you want to get out of your car and walk.”

Residents of Bangor and Brewer have said they would like to see their waterfronts and business areas come alive in that way, and it slowly is beginning to happen.

“I’m looking 10 years down the road. I’d like to see this as a place where you go for experiences,” he said, listing such things as standing in line for a sandwich at the Coffeepot on State Street as an example of a local experience that exists now.

Bangor’s Bates, who works closely with the downtown business community, said the city will be working with area arts and cultural groups to bring more activity to downtown.

Cook also said Bangor’s efforts to develop more residential units in upper levels of downtown commercial buildings makes sense because it brings an around-the-clock population to downtown, which is good for restaurants, pubs and other businesses.

In addition, some businesses have expanded their hours, which helps.

“I’ve been [doing business] downtown for 10 years and there’s been a huge perk-up,” but more can be done, he said.

Downtown, he said, really could use a small convenience store that sells such basics as Tylenol and milk.

“You don’t want to send people outside of downtown to get those things,” he said.

United we stand?

While the two cities traditionally have been competitors, the decades ahead could bring even more change.

“What I see is the removal of political boundaries, because it makes no sense to duplicate such municipal assets as staff and equipment,” Bangor’s McKay said.

“It will be out of necessity, but it will take some political leadership,” McKay said.

Brewer’s Main-Boyington arrived at a similar conclusion.

“These divisions of the river and the bridges make no difference to us,” she said. “It’s irrelevant to most folks. People will always go back and forth.”