Times Record, Sept 27, 2007
Editorial: Well Composed
Two events held earlier this week indicate that the raw materials to forge an alloy capable of the tempering negative impacts of Brunswick Naval Air Station's impending closure are poised to come together.
Wednesday's celebration of Saint-Gobain BTI's 25,000-square-foot plant expansion in the Brunswick Industrial Park represents a tangible local manifestation of the global composites boom. Coupled with steady growth at established firms like Harbor Technologies in Brunswick and Custom Composites in Bath — and the potential for several similar start-up enterprises funded by North Star Alliance grants — the Saint-Gobain BTI expansion offers further evidence that the Mid-coast region has emerged as an economic incubator for an industry upon which builders of modern sea and air vessels increasingly depend.
The success of existing local firms that specialize in research, development and manufacture of composites demonstrates to like-minded entrepreneurs eying the region from afar that this community embraces its nascent image as a hub for the emerging industry. It also positions the region to quickly take full advantage of the Brunswick Local Redevelopment Authority's prescience in crafting a BNAS master reuse plan that promotes composites technology — and its potential for a symbiotic relationship with private aviation research and development ventures lured by like-new runways and buildings that the Navy will leave behind.
Similarly, Monday's media blitz to announce record-setting enrollments in Maine's community colleges highlighted the second key ingredient of a serendipitous convergence that holds promise to transform this part of the state into a post-BNAS composites Mecca.
Economists long have lamented Maine's inability to provide enough skilled workers to modernize the state's economic engine.
Gov. John Baldacci's targeted expansion of the community college system — with its focus on programs designed to dovetail with economic and technological evolution — aims to change that dynamic. Mirroring the private sector, the community college system's strategy to meet the composites industry's workforce demand melds immediate and long-term approaches.
To address current needs, Southern Maine Community College opened a new composites training center in a building the town purchased from The Times Record, converting what could have been a white elephant into a regional asset.
With an eye to the future, SMCC has requested a public conveyance of four buildings and property at BNAS to create what essentially will be a composites technologies campus within walking distance of employers who will tap the labor source trained there.
Working independently, but with the common goal of reinforcing the Mid-coast region's economic infrastructure before the base closure wrecking ball hits, local business leaders and the community college system have laid the groundwork for a model of collaboration likely to pay dividends now and well into the future.