'Land bank' sets sights on first goal: Revitalizing East Millinocket mill

Oct. 6—When Mike Michaud stands on the grounds of the old Great Northern Paper Co. in East Millinocket, he doesn't just see the remnants of the economic engine that devastated the town when it shuttered 10 years ago. He sees a site that will allow the town to "take control of its own destiny."

Revitalizing the defunct mill is the inaugural project for the Maine Redevelopment Land Bank Authority — a new state entity dedicated to assisting communities with the redevelopment of abandoned or otherwise unused properties that may be unattractive to private or municipal developers.

Tuck O'Brien, executive director of the state land bank, said the former mill is a great "poster child" for the projects the organization hopes to take on — "properties that used to do a ton of work for their communities and for the state that stopped working."

Every project will have different needs, but O'Brien said the redevelopment authority has a "robust toolbox" at its disposal. It can assist with funding, technical assistance, staff and consultants to help with due diligence, title work or grant funding management. It can contract with public and private entities, issue bonds, manage brownfield funds, provide services to quiet title and clean up foreclosure issues.

The Legislature established the land bank in 2022 and on Friday formally announced the mill as its first project.

A 'ROBUST TOOLBOX'

East Millinocket purchased the mill site for $1.45 million in 2020, using federal grants. Since then, the East Millinocket Industrial Board, charged with overseeing the mill redevelopment, has made strides toward breathing life back into the site that once accounted for 80% of the town's tax base.

The mill opened in 1906. At its peak, the mill and its larger sister plant in Millinocket, employed 4,000 people in what were considered the best-paying manufacturing jobs in the state. The Great Northern mill in Millinocket closed in 2008 and the plant in East Millinocket followed suit in 2011. Unemployment in the region shot to 22%.

The East Millinocket site briefly reopened in 2011, rehiring about 215 workers and injecting some optimism into the community. But the mill shuttered for good in 2014.

A decade later, both mills are once again showing signs of life. In Millinocket, the 1,400-acre site is being transformed into a center for the development and manufacturing of sustainable products.

The 215-acre site in East Millinocket is now home to a logistics company, and a biorefinery has plans to set up shop soon. The board is in conversation with other businesses, including a solar panel manufacturer, some forestry-related businesses and a data center. There are plans for a river walk and a green space. Eventually, officials hope to build housing nearby.

"We're looking at ways where we can diversify, so we're not all dependent on one sector," said Michaud, who is head of the board. He is also a selectman and a former Maine 2nd District congressman.

But keeping up the pace of the last few years is difficult "with an all-volunteer board and no money," he said. That's where the state can hopefully step in.

There are hundreds of buildings across the state in various stages of redevelopment. In a listening tour this summer, O'Brien said he spoke with community leaders about buildings that they had no idea what to do with and about buildings that just needed a little bit of money to move things along.

"East Millinocket was kind of in the middle," O'Brien said, making it a good fit for the organization's first undertaking.

"They're at the stage where they definitely need more professional support to finalize some of these projects, so it was a perfect fit for us because they had done a lot of the visioning. They had laid the groundwork. And now it's a good opportunity for us to come in and help get some of this stuff across the finish line."

It's too early to say what specific help East Millinocket will need, but Michaud said the group is "very excited to be able to finally control our own destiny."

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The land bank is going to focus on commercial and large multifamily properties, which is where O'Brien said it can have the most impact.

The approach is "use-agnostic," he said, so while housing will likely play a large role in future redevelopments, the authority isn't specifically a housing entity. The goal is to help with projects that can catalyze additional development.

"Our tagline is 'preparing for possibility,' and we are trying to get the property ready to go back to the use that the community and the market deem appropriate for that site," he said, adding that there are between 300 and 600 sites across the state that could be candidates.

O'Brien hopes the land bank can take on three or four projects this year. No other sites have been announced, but there's potential for the former tannery in Hartland, as well as properties in Van Buren, Madawaska, Kittery, Wiscasset and Fort Fairfield. Not all will be as far along as East Millinocket.

"Our goal is to be able to help fill gaps in different types of projects in different places along the development life cycle," O'Brien said. "There's no one-size-fits-all solution. ... If that was the case, we wouldn't need to exist. There are a lot of people out there doing really good work, and we don't want to reinvent or try to replicate what they're doing. But there are a lot of gaps in between the work that's going on, and that's what we're here to help fix."

While the state land bank authority isn't planning to tackle single-family homes, O'Brien acknowledged that there are hundreds of houses across Maine in need of rehabilitation. One of his tasks as director is to develop a database of those properties. They're just too spread out for the state program to effectively tackle.

However, O'Brien said he hopes the state land bank can help municipalities set up their own programs to target single-family homes.

O'Brien said he only knows of one other land bank in Maine: The Sanford Land Bank Authority, which was used as a model for the statewide agency.

Ian Houseal oversaw roughly 100 dangerous-building hearings over the last seven years since Sanford established its land bank authority.

The commission was established in 2017 to handle ongoing issues with the city's aging housing stock by expediting the transition of abandoned and foreclosed properties back to value-producing real estate, either through rehabilitation or demolition.

Abandoned properties are more than just an eyesore, said Houseal, formerly the Sanford director of community development and now a commissioner on the state board. They create safety issues, depress property values and cost the city money in both maintenance and depreciated value.

"Ten years ago, that was so damaging for Sanford," he said.

Rebecca Lapierre, a member of Sanford's land bank commission, said the city has seen property values increase since the program launched. "We've seen improvements in neighborhoods where we have buildings that were no longer habitable that we were able to redevelop," she said.

The commission has worked with the Sanford Housing Authority, Habitat for Humanity and private developers to get housing back on the market.

Lapierre, a real estate agent and developer, purchased one of the buildings at auction in 2020. The draw, she said, was getting access to a distressed property for a low price. The buildings already have foundations and framing and are already connected to sewer lines, water and utilities.

"Then it's just a matter of fixing up whatever else needs to be done," she said.

The Sanford Land Bank Authority has been on pause for much of 2024 but has a meeting scheduled for next week.

"I definitely think any type of land bank authority helps communities out," Lapierre said. "It gives those municipalities a little extra push to try to get these buildings redeveloped."

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