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BELFAST (AP) – Credit card giant MBNA, which has scaled back operations along Maine’s midcoast, announced Wednesday it has agreed to sell some of its real estate in the region to a Maryland developer.

The properties, which include MBNA’s operations centers in Rockland, the Knox Mill complex in Camden, the Point Lookout Center in Northport and Springbrook Hill apartments in Belfast, were sold to Maine Investment Properties LLC of Baltimore.

Neither the terms of the agreement nor the estimated closing date were disclosed.

Brett Cohen, vice president for business development of Maine Investment Properties, would not comment specifically on his company’s plans but said “we’re entertaining several scenarios.”

“These include re-marketing some of the properties and developing some of them on our own. Also, we’re actively pursuing joint ventures with local developers,” Cohen said.

“We’re really excited about the midcoast,” said Cohen, a Portland native who grew up in Newburgh. “The properties themselves are beautiful… Everything MBNA has done is super high-end, they way they’re built and maintained.”

The properties that the company put on the market total an estimated 900,000 square feet and do not include MBNA’s regional headquarters in Belfast or its call centers in Portland, Orono, Presque Isle, Brunswick, Farmington and Fort Kent.

The sales will cap a retrenchment by Delaware-based MBNA, whose former chief executive officer Charles Cawley had a home in the midcoast.

At its peak, MBNA had more than 4,500 employees in Maine.

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the biggest concentration outside its home state, and contributed $50 million to philanthropic projects in the state. The work force has since been reduced to about 3,000, including nearly 1,900 at the Belfast complex.

AP-ES-06-15-05 1244EDT

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