BANGOR — Ground was broken Monday for a $9 million, 30,000-square-foot eye-care facility expected to create 50 new jobs while offering a range of vision services not now available under one roof anywhere in the state.

Vision Care of Maine is the brainchild of Dr. Craig W. Young, 55, an Aroostook County ophthalmologist who has been practicing for two decades. He called the development a “new era in eye care in Maine,” that will bring eye doctors, nurses and technicians together in one facility that will be easily accessible to patients throughout central and eastern Maine.

Gov. Angus King donned a hard hat and climbed aboard a bulldozer Monday to scoop up the first load of dirt from the Vision Care site, which is located in the Oak Ridge Business Park on Stillwater Avenue behind Home Depot.

When he introduced King, Young admitted it was unusual for a governor to attend a groundbreaking ceremony.

“You invest several million dollars and create 50 jobs,” King responded, “and I’ll be wherever you want.”

The new facility, which will look something like a spaceship, will house two full surgical suites, four minor surgical and laser treatment suites, six diagnostic pods, an in-house pharmacy, and a complete frame and optical dispensing shop that will also custom grind lenses on site.

Patients waiting for their glasses or for an exam will be able to grab a sandwich or a cup of soup in the snack bar. A 60-seat media and conference center, known as the Knowledge Center, will be used for community health education events, as well as continuing education programs for health care professionals throughout Maine.

Young’s existing offices in Presque Isle, Caribou, Madawaska, Houlton and Millinocket, combined with the new Bangor facility, will form the basic structure of the Vision Care of Maine network.

When it opens in May 1999, Vision Care will employ up to 90 people, including up to 10 optometrists, and up to four eye surgeons, said Young. About 50 new jobs will be created, including nurses and technicians. The remainder will probably be filled by those already working in the area who join the practice.

In a familiar refrain among health care practitioners, Young cited managed care pressures as one of the driving forces behind Vision Care. Most managed care companies, he said, do not want to contract with small practices, or with lone doctors. Combining forces in Vision Care will give the practice economic clout, he said.

Young also said Bangor needs Vision Care. In a study of the 24 largest communities in Maine, he said, Bangor ranked dead last in terms of eye services, measured as the number of cataract surgeries performed per capita. Portland ranked No. 1. In a similar study covering Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, Young said, Bangor ranked 73rd among 75 cities.

“Why?” Young asked. “Because people are not getting to physicians to get services to get surgery. Access is not there.”

The project is going forward, despite the City Council’s decision May 11 to pull out of its financing. Two years ago, the City Council pledged to guarantee a $500,000 loan Young was getting for his project.

Bangor heard nothing about the financing for more than a year, during which time the project changed banks. When Young came back to the council to make sure the guarantee would still be there, more than a dozen optometrists, ophthalmologists and others involved in eye care turned out to urge the council not to pledge taxpayers’ money toward the private project.

They also disputed Young’s statistics showing Bangor was underserved for eye care, and that communities such as those where he did surgeries were necessarily better served.

Dr. Paul Moulton told the council at the time that the number of such surgeries was “not a function of patient care, but of how aggressive the physicians are” in doing them.

Reporter Roxanne Moore Saucier contributed to this story.