Six municipalities launching business group using money left
over from World War II.
REGION — Most people who passed the Portland offices of Jensen
Baird Gardner & Henry Wednesday morning probably had no idea that, inside
the building at 10 Free St., a meeting was taking place that could effect the
lives of most local residents for years, maybe decades to come.
But inside, five members of a semi-archaic state agency –
the Greater Portland Public Development Commission (GPPDC) – met to consider a
funding request that could drive the region’s economic engine, luring
businesses and creating jobs.
That request could also put the commission out of
business.
“We’ve pretty much asking them for everything they’ve
got, over two years,” said Keith Luke, Westbrook’s economic development
director.
The “we” in this scenario is the Greater Portland
Economic Development Corp. (GPEDC), a group created this past January as a
joint venture of six area municipalities: Cape Elizabeth, Falmouth, Portland,
Scarborough, South Portland and Westbrook. The new group is taking aim at the
remaining GPPDC funds in order to fund collaborative economic development
initiatives in its member towns.
“All they’ve got,” where the GPPDC is concerned, is a
little less than $500,000 – all that remains from the agency’s founding in
1945. That’s when, at the close of Word War II, the commission was created as a
state agency (with two commissioners from Portland and three from South
Portland) to acquire and manage the South Portland shipyards, federal property
where the Liberty Ships were built.
Over time, the GPPDC sold off the shipyard property and
used that money to answer its charge, to make loans and grants to businesses to
the two cities on either side of the Fore River. According to Michael Quinlan,
an attorney at Jensen Baird Gardner & Henry who serves as corporate counsel
to GPPDC, the commission made an agreement in 2003 to have Coastal Enterprises
manage the last of its revolving-loan fund, by that time drawn down to about
$300,000.
That left GPPDC with its last little bit in liquid assets
and, as a result, said Portland commissioner Nathan Smith, “We have not been
particularly active in recent years.”
In fact, in 2008, a bill was submitted in the state
legislature to dissolve the GPPDC and have the last of its assets rolled into
the state’s general fund.
That bill never got out of committee, changed instead
into a resolve to require additional auditing, thanks in part to some vigorous
lobbying.
“We were like, ‘Hey, no, wait, we can still use that
money right here,’” said Erik Carson, South Portland’s Assistant City Manager.
That stay of execution also resulted in a change to
GPPDC’s charter, allowing it for the first time to loan out funds, or make
grants, to all six towns that are now members of the GPEDC.
“Under their current charter, as amended, they do have
the power to make grants for economic development, as well as directly to
businesses,” said Quinlan.
But why empty its purse to GPEDC, when there are already
plenty of economic development groups in the area, including South Portland’s
city committee, and, over in Scarborough, an independent group, the Scarborough
Economic Development Corp. (SEDCO)?
“We can’t afford to be parochial anymore,” said Carson.
“Economic development is not about a single municipality anymore.”
So, what is GPEDC about?
“We’re not interested in doing more studies,” said
Carson. “We know what the world looks like here. What we are interested in
doing is filling our existing, vacant business space, in bringing more business
to this area, because that growth benefits the entire region.”
“We asked to see a plan,” explained Smith. “We’ll see
what the proposal is, but I know I will be taking the proposal very seriously.
This is not a casual proposal.”
The reason, said Smith, is that although the new GPEDC
does not yet have staff, or even a full board of directors, it does have the
potential to be a “groundbreaking collaboration of communities to really
rethink how economic development is done.”
Already, Carson said, the core members of the group
– primarily the economic development directors in the places that have
them, town managers in the places that don’t – have achieved some success.
The GPEDC was really born in 2005, when Carson and his
peers worked a Chicago trade shows together, trying to lure biotech companies
to the region. That led to the creation of a website, www.greaterportland.org, and a
brainstorming session on how the municipalities could work together.
From that was born an informal working group known as the
Metro Coalition.
“One of the first things we did,” explains Carson, “was
to go in on a joint crime lab. If Portland has a crime lab, why duplicate that
effort?”
Metro Coalition partners then teamed last year to bring the
state’s Pine Tree Development Zones, and the tax breaks they offer, to
Cumberland and York counties.
With that success, came a realization that the Metro
Coalition towns really could work together.
“Ultimately,” said Harvey Rosenfeld, president of the
Scarborough economic development group, “the Greater Portland Economic
Development Corporation is a marketing effort to help promote Greater Portland.
Selling Greater Portland to areas outside of the state works better than trying
to sell individual communities like Scarborough and Westbrook.”
And, Metro Coalition members agree, a rising tide lifts
all boats, which is what led Cape Elizabeth and Falmouth to join, even though
those may not traditionally be towns one would expect to be in the market for a
new factory.
“A company may open in Scarborough or Westbrook,” said
Luke, “but the workers, and, most importantly, the top executives, will want to
live in Cape Elizabeth.”
That’s why it’s important to sell the entire region and
not just which town can offer the best deal, Luke said.
“The company’s that have their top executives in this
area are the ones that will continue to grow and expand in this area,” he said.
“There’s strength in numbers,” said Rosenfeld. “To really
succeed, we need to be several communities working as one, especially on
projects that are too big for any one community. The main idea is really get
Greater Portland in front of potential businesses around the country, and
outside the country.”
“Unless communities work in concert, they are not going
to be as attractive in the national market at luring desirable development,”
agrees Smith. “The fact that the intent is to work in a concerted way with
adjoining communities to build the business base is precisely what the
commission funding was designed to do.”
So, what are the chances that the GPEDC will get the
money it needs to get off the ground? That all depends on what Smith and his
fellow commissioners heard on Wednesday.
“We want to leverage our remaining funds in a way that
will have the most long-term future potential for economic benefit in the
region,” said Smith. “So, the question is whether to fund, from time to time,
such ad hoc proposals as might come forward and meet certain criteria, or
whether to seed in a major way a fundamental change in the way economic
development is done.”
“I think we need to do what we can to help lay the
foundation for a concerted economic strategy in the area,” said Smith. “What
I’m looking for is a strong business plan that lays out accomplishing a mission
that the GPPDC was established to accomplish 50 years ago.”
A Closer Look
Greater Portland Economic Development Corp. Board of Directors
- Erik Carson, South Portland assistant manager
- Bill Chance, University of New England vice president of institutional advancement
- James Harnden, Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce board member
- Theo Holtwijk, Falmouth director of long-range planning
- Jennifer Hutchins, Creative Portland/PACA
- Keith Luke, Westbrook economic development director
- Karen Martin, Scarborough Economic Development Corp. marketing manager
- Michael McGovern, Cape Elizabeth town manager
- Gregory Mitchell, Portland economic development director
- Ed Palmer, Marriott at Sable Oaks general manager
- Gordon Scannell Jr., Perkins Thompson Attorneys & Counselors at Law director
- Kaylene Waindle, Southern Maine Community College dean of advancement
- Plus, up to seven others, to be named.
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