RUMFORD – Empty chairs far outnumbered people at Wednesday night’s informational meeting on River Valley Growth Council projects in Rumford.
After a brief tour of the council’s River Valley Technology Center by Richard Lovejoy, the two non-council members present were given 30-minute presentations by Executive Director Rosie Bradley and Scott Christiansen, director of the Fractionation Development Center there.
The four-story technology center, Lovejoy said, has 16,000 square feet available per floor for new business start-ups.
“It’s got a lot of potential,” he said of the former bag mill, which was donated to the council by MeadWestvaco Paper Division.
Paul J. Scalzone, a program developer with Coastal Enterprises Inc. of Wiscasset, and Len Greaney of Rumford, joined council member and Dixfield business owner Norine Clarke for the tour.
During the first presentation, Bradley highlighted the council and its work to create jobs by using the technology center as a business incubator, then stressed the challenges to get the River Valley area to reinvent its economy.
“Change is the huge thing that we’re trying to get people to accept,” she said. “That’s our biggest project, getting people to embrace change.”
Christiansen essentially provided a recipe for creating jobs by using Western Maine’s renewable resource – trees – to make oil.
Maine, he said, has the forest biomass needed to create fuels, chemicals, industrial gases, pharmaceuticals and other products.
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