Last February, 10 people from Libra Foundation piled into a van for a road trip to pick a site for major downtown investment. Loose criteria: Communities had to have a hospital and fit in the days’ drive.

After passing up Bridgton (sewer issues) and Rumford (looked more viable than they’d anticipated,) the van stopped here.

The result: A $7 million-dollar effort, channeled through Norway Properties, has knocked down the old C.B.Cummings & Sons mill at the end of Main Street and will replace it with 18,000 to 20,000 square feet of commercial office space and 18 townhouses.

“We hope to be a catalyst to a redevelopment of downtown,” Libra President Owen Wells said.

He talked with the head of New Balance and tried to get the sneaker company to stay on Main Street; it was too far along on a new Route 26 building.

Instead, the man who convinced L.L.Bean to open its first downtown outlet in Portland has sights on someone else.

It’s a “very large national retailer interested in coming to New England – they’re not here yet,” Wells said. Only hint: The store’s already in 32 states.

Some locals were sad to see C.B.Cummings, and the industry it represented, go, Town Manager David Holt said. He sounds like one of them: “We can bemoan that all day long and it doesn’t bring them back. We aren’t going to make Tinkertoys here anymore.”

“It’s certainly a development we wouldn’t have seen without Libra,” Holt added. “What do I know? I wouldn’t have thought that anyone would have built a high-end housing development on an old mill site.”

The commercial space is slated for a 2007 opening, the townhouses – still unpriced – for late 2007-2008.

Black Mountain

After purchasing the small community ski slope in Rumford in 2003, through the foundation’s athletic arm, Maine Winter Sports Center, Libra invested in a $5-million-plus upgrade.

“Black Mountain is known universally for its Nordic cross-country skiing,” Wells said. “We didn’t really plan to do as much as we ended up doing. I went to a meeting there. I went to go to the bathroom and it was like peeing outside the door. I said, ‘Well, I think you need a new lodge.'”

Now, with a new post-and-beam headquarters, it’s being considered for summer weddings and the town’s looked at building an amphitheater to make it a four-season spot.

“It’s one of the finest economic tools we have,” said Rumford Town Manager Steve Eldridge.

There’s spin-off already: A private developer has proposed a 250-lot high-end subdivision at the base of the mountain. Aimed at the second-home market, prices would start at $250,000.

“It would not have happened, I believe, unless the Libra Foundation had done this, I know it,” Eldridge said.

Pineland

Since the original campus’ purchase in 2000, Libra has expanded holdings in the area to 5,000 acres. Pineland’s buildings are 75 percent occupied, host to 800 jobs, according to Wells. And it’s soon to become the home of the U.S. Biathlon Association.

The most recent news is on the agricultural front. Gillespie Farms has doubled its crop space for the coming year and a new cheese-making venture will debut in May. Finishing touches are being applied to an operation that can expand to make 1.5 million pounds of cheese a year with local milk.

That operation will be the center of a tourism draw designed to entice weeklong stays in Maine. Visitors can shop, bike, horseback ride and make their own cheese. (Pineland Farms will ship it home once it has aged to taste, according to Jere Michelson, vice president and chief financial officer at Libra.)

“We’re not trying to make cheese to make money for us. We’re trying to develop Maine in a way that hasn’t been done before,” Wells said.

Summer camp

Launched in Lewiston in 1999 because the city had poverty demographics close to Washington County’s, yet was closer to Libra’s Portland headquarters, The Opportunity to Shine program has sent thousands of kids to camp on $1,000 vouchers. Now in Portland and Bangor, it costs $4 million each year between the three cities.

Wells said trustees originally agreed to offer vouchers for 10 years, then review it.

“I’ve been thinking, my God, should we be putting so much money into this program?” he said.

One of the hang-ups, outside of cost: It’s hard to tell what kids are getting out of it.

“We’ve tried to find every way to Sunday whether the kids are benefiting,” Wells said. Evidence may come, years down the road, if college applications or admissions are up among former campers.

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