Norway Savings will build a financial training and processing center.

OXFORD – Norway Savings Bank has agreed to buy two of the four lots of the new Oxford Hills Business Park to build a financial training and processing center.

The announcement came Wednesday at a groundbreaking ceremony on the Route 26 property attended by bank President Robert Harmon and Maine Gov. John Baldacci.

Political candidates from the region turned out in force for the occasion, and board members from the Growth Council of Oxford Hills handed out miniature golden shovel lapel pins. The pins were attached to a card with a quote by Alan Key that stated “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Baldacci echoed that sentiment, marveling that the Growth Council, under its real estate arm of Western Maine Development, had been able to put together the deal with Norway Savings Bank before any physical improvements have been made.

“We haven’t even broken ground yet and we’ve already sold two of the lots. Now that’s using Yankee ingenuity,” Baldacci said.

In an interview before the ceremony, Harmon said Norway Savings Bank, which bought out Coastal Savings Bank two years ago, has outgrown its main headquarters branch on Main Street in Norway. It now has 20 branches, and is opening a new branch in Gorham in the fall.

Over the next 12 to 24 months, Harmon said, the bank plans to build a financial services operation in the park. The first building would be 5,000 square feet, designed for future expansion, possibly another bank branch and other retail space, he said.

The new facility will relocate all of the bank’s financial processing operations, including processing of paperwork for mortgages, loans and other lending services. It will provide a training facility and encompass the bank’s computer room operations.

“We’ll be employing upwards of 100 people here over time,” he said. Many of those workers will relocate from the Norway office, but new jobs will be created over time.

Harmon said the park has been designated for special tax incentives under Baldacci’s Pine Tree Zone program, and that, along with the park’s location along Route 26, helped guide the bank’s decision to locate in the park.

He pointed out that funding has been approved for a Maine Turnpike bypass around Gray Village, which will significantly cut the commuter time from the Lewiston-Auburn area to the Oxford Hills.

“This is our home base,” Harmon said of the Oxford Hills. “Our labor base is here. Why go anywhere else?”

The price was right, too: Norway Savings paid only around $10,000 an acre to WMD for the two front lots of nine and eight acres each.

The town has agreed to upgrade the Number Six Road, and Western Maine Development will be able to begin infrastructure improvements this summer, thanks to a $232,500 grant award from the Municipal Investment Trust Fund.

A new entry road from Route 26 through the park property has received approval from the Maine Department of Transportation. A tax increment financing district has also been proposed for the park, and that issue will be decided by voters at the June town meeting.

The park land, with a total of 40 acres, was donated to the town by local developer Bob Bahre.

Floyd Thayer, chairman of the Oxford Board of Selectmen, said the Oxford Hills area, by working in partnership, is “emerging from under the radar” as a great place to do business.

Thayer said the area is “in the midst of one of the finest labor pools in the state of Maine.”