MILLINOCKET, Maine — A dozen potential occupants have expressed interest in the town’s former mill site, but Our Katahdin president Sean DeWitt said the volunteer economic development group doesn’t see jobs getting generated there until about 2020.
The nonprofit group, which bought the site for $1 in January, has been surprised and encouraged at the number of businesses interested in relocating to Millinocket, but has tempered its optimism with caution that a great deal needs to be done first to make the site — once the location of one of the state’s biggest paper mills — more marketable.
“I never dreamed that there was this much interest in the site,” DeWitt said during a recent interview. “I get the sense that there’s quite a few people that have had their eye on it for awhile now.”
The dozen businesses that have toured the site include biorefineries, pellet manufacturers, sawmills and packaging manufacturers — representatives of seven industries in total, DeWitt said.
The group is compiling an inventory of the 1,400-acre site’s assets; investigating the depth of the environmental assessments done on the site; working with town officials on a marketing strategy of the site that also includes the town’s assets, such as downtown and the town’s airport; and working with attorneys to resolve an IRS lien on the property, DeWitt said.
The County is pleased to feature content from our sister company, Bangor Daily News. To read the rest of “Despite optimism, jobs still years away for former Millinocket mill site,” an article by contributing Bangor Daily News staff writer Nick Sambides Jr., please follow this link to the BDN online.
