OLD TOWN (AP) – As potential suitors met with state officials Friday, residents pondered the effects of the closing of the Georgia-Pacific pulp and paper mill that employs 400 people and accounts for 34 percent of the town’s tax base.

In Old Town, the closing would ripple from the schools attended by the children of millworkers to the businesses where workers and their families shop.

“This place is going to be a ghost town” if the mill doesn’t reopen, Iabasis, a Penobscot Nation member, predicted as news of the mill’s closing swept across town on Thursday.

Gary Dupray, owner of Gary’s Discount Center, which sells a variety of items from furniture to knick-knacks, said he already is feeling the impact.

Sales began to drop off by about 25 percent two weeks ago when there were reports that Georgia-Pacific planned to close the mill.

“They want to wait and see what tomorrow brings,” said Dupray, who has run his store downtown for 20 years and has weathered shutdowns and cutbacks. The mill once employed 1,100 to 1,200 employees, he said.

Gov. John Baldacci vowed to try to find a buyer for the mill before it is shut down in 60 days by Georgia-Pacific Corp. The company has agreed to work with the state to market the mill, which used to make tissue paper.

Baldacci expressed optimism because the state already identified four parties interested in buying the mill. They met with state officials at an undisclosed location Friday, and they were to begin touring the mill on Monday.

This isn’t the first time the mill has been faced with closure. It faced a potential shutdown in 2003 but remained open because of a deal in which the state bought its landfill and hired Casella Waste Systems to run it.

Using money from the $26 million sale and additional money provided by Georgia-Pacific, the mill made an effort to cut energy costs by purchasing a used biomass boiler that it has updated at a cost of $29 million.

Still, the mill’s electricity costs are high, said Ted Sapoznik, G-P vice president of consumer products manufacturing.

Last week, Baldacci and Jack Cashman, the state’s economic development commissioner, indicated state officials have been working on a plan to help reduce the plant’s annual production costs by as much as $5 million.

They declined to release details about the plan but Cashman said 75 percent of the plan deals with reducing the mill’s energy costs.

Baldacci said the state’s cost reduction plan will be proposed to parties that express an interest in acquiring the Old Town mill.

State officials’ optimism rubbed off on many Georgia-Pacific workers.

Duane Lugdon, international representative of the United Steelworkers, which represents about 340 of the mill’s 400 employees, said he feels confident that the mill will survive in some fashion with help from the state.

“There is light at the end of the tunnel, and we’re going to put this back together,” he said.

Bob Sibley, 55, a retired contractor from Lincoln, was visiting Old Town’s downtown Thursday when the news broke.

He pointed to his own family as reason for optimism for anxious millworkers and residents. Sibley’s daughter and son-in-law work at the Lincoln paper mill and were there when it closed a year and a half ago, only to reopen, stronger and better.

“Keep your heads up even though it might not be so good now,” he said.

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Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com

AP-ES-03-17-06 1737EST

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