By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

GREENE – Maine Poly may rise again, but it will be a rough climb.

On Tuesday, Kimball Dunton, the closed company’s president, sat in his paneled office, answered phones and met with people offering their help.

“I’m trying to get the courage to start from scratch again,” said the 82-year-old executive. “It’s going to be a very tough road.”

The maker of plastic bags and laminates has been closed since last Friday, when the final 21 workers were sent home. There was no severance, just owed vacation pay for the workers who were leaving.

“It was a terrible day,” company President Dunton said. Many of the workers were good friends. All worked hard.

And the company was making a profit, he said.

With new investment, the company could pay its debt and make money. The road has been difficult, though.

In 2001, the Greene factory declared bankruptcy. It limped along for three years. Taxes went unpaid, partly due to a debt on the company’s equipment. The lien holder on the equipment, GE Capital Inc., forced the doors to close.

That lasted for a day.

Then, investor Dick Dyke of Wilton and partner Yung Edwards from Las Vegas brought more than $300,000 in cash to the company.

“Dyke wrote that check without blinking,” Dunton said.

Since then, the company has repaid all but $87,000 of the $215,000 in back taxes to the town.

“We were getting things paid off,” said Dunton. “We were making headway.”

The Sun Journal was unable to reach Dyke on Tuesday. However, Rick McDougold, an assistant to Dyke, said operating the company became “cost-prohibitive.”

McDougold described it as “landlord problems.”

According to Dunton and landlord Bruce Daniel, the company received a bargain basement rent, about 77 cents per square foot, when it restarted in 2001.

It was just a temporary price, Daniel and Dunton said Tuesday.

After the landlord began talking about an increase, Dyke decided to close the company.

In a letter to employees dated July 22, Dyke said the hike was more than the company could afford.

“These additional costs simply break the bank of our little company,” he wrote. “It is with deep sadness I tell you that we must close our doors and go our separate ways.”

Also on July 22, the company laid off 23 people.

Since then, Maine Poly has missed a $3,016 payment on its back taxes and the bill for the new year’s taxes: $35,281.

Neither McDougold nor Dunton commented on the bills.

Greene Town Manager Charles Noonan said Tuesday the money and the jobs will be missed.

Maine Poly was the town’s largest private employer.

Dunton hopes it will be again. At its height, the company employed about 200 people.

To rebuild the company, millions of dollars in new investment would be needed, Dunton said.

It would be a lot of work.

“I’m not sure I’m up to it,” he said.