Camden is where MBNA first landed in Maine.

The story is told that company co-founder Charles Cawley, whose grandfather ran businesses in Camden and Belfast, was in town at a cocktail party in the summer in the early 1990s and was told by a local real estate broker that office space was available.

Camden is also where Cawley and other investors gathered at a local inn in the early 1980s to plan the company as a spinoff of a failing credit card division of a Maryland bank (Maryland Bank, National Association, hence the name).

Today, the company employs 28,000 in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Cawley retired from the company in December 2003 after a clash with the board of directors over compensation for top-level executives.

MBNA’s new management is signaling a new direction, a spokesman said, pledging to rein in extravagances such as jets, yachts and fine art.

From a token 75 jobs in Camden in 1993, the company rapidly grew, renovating the former Knox Woolen Mill into a chic office complex that sported top-notch Maine landscape art on its walls, an underground parking garage, and a lobby that featured a rotating collection of classic autos.

MBNA saw Camden as a near-perfect fit. As the state struggled to its feet after the recession of 1991, the company had no shortage of eager job applicants, many in their 20s.

Company executives, also young, were happy to be living in a place of natural beauty and community vibrancy.

Company officials said Mainers worked hard, and the Maine offices soon performed as well as, if not better than, other locations around the nation.

The company bought adjacent residential properties and grew to 750 jobs. In 1995, it announced a major expansion. Some in Camden opposed the move, saying the company was in danger of dwarfing the picture-postcard, tourist-attracting downtown.

So Cawley took the expansion 18 miles north to Belfast, and MBNA was no longer known locally as “that Camden credit card company.” Offices geared to part-time employment were opened in Orono and Portland.

Then in 1999, MBNA spread out its wealth of jobs even more broadly, opening offices in Rockland, Brunswick, Farmington, Fort Kent and Presque Isle.

In 1999, MBNA also expanded in Belfast, building a sprawling office campus along Route 3 that rivaled those on Route 128 in Boston.

– By NEWS reporter Tom Groening