By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Six years later, local development officials say they’re lucky the U.S. Postal Service passed them by.

Lewiston-Auburn has recovered nicely since the city of Scarborough won a coveted $82 million mail distribution facility in May 2000. Economic development and new projects have come to the communities in spite of the snub – and maybe because of it.

“In retrospect, it might have turned out to be the best thing that ever happened,” said Auburn Mayor Normand Guay, then a city councilor. “Overall, look at what we’ve done since then. The perception of Lewiston and Auburn has changed. A large part of that happened when we didn’t get it.”

The U.S. Postal Service and the city of Scarborough are preparing to open the 429,000-square-foot mail distribution warehouse on the site of the former Grondin Quarry south of Portland.

The new center is scheduled to open next week, after years of delays. When it’s up to full speed it will process, sort and distribute all of the mail for southern and central Maine and provide some 600 jobs.

In 1999, Postal Service officials announced they would locate the center in either Lewiston or Auburn. It would have meant jobs and investment, and locals hoped it would reinvigorate the economy.

“I don’t think anyone today would ever say they’re glad it didn’t come here,” said John Cleveland, a former state senator and Auburn mayor and a member of the Lewiston-Auburn contingent that worked to land the distribution center.

Development officials from Lewiston and Auburn put together an impressive presentation designed to bring the center here.

“It would have been a great bit of economic development, another great thing for Lewiston-Auburn,” Cleveland said.

But it didn’t happen. Postal employees reacted angrily to the decision because they didn’t want to commute from the Portland area. The Postal Service reopened the search process and ultimately chose Scarborough.

“I still believe we were used as a ploy,” Cleveland said. “I believe L-A was used to manipulate the process and get some concessions from the Portland area.”

But rather than give up, area developers got more determined.

“Believe it or not, even though we didn’t get it, I think it was a stroke of luck,” said Martin Eisenstein, a local attorney and then chairman of the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council.

“The project permitted the two communities to come together as one community, supporting the same project,” Eisenstein said. “That groundswell translated into support for later projects.”

He pointed to Central Maine Medical Center’s cardiac center expansion later in 2000 as one example. Add Wal-Mart’s 2001 decision to locate in Lewiston, he said. Wal-Mart later moved into the very spot the Postal Service was considering.

“We were talking about a government agency with no local taxes, and now we have a large distribution center with jobs that contributes taxes,” he said.

Chip Morrison, head of the Androscoggin Chamber of Commerce, agreed.

“I would rather have a private business paying taxes than a government agency that pays none – and so would most taxpayers,” Morrison said.

He doubted the center would have had as great an economic impact as expected. The new center is designed to replace another center in Portland. He speculated that postal workers would have stayed where they were and not relocated to L-A.

“They were already Maine jobs held by Maine people,” Morrison said. “So I think it worked out better for us.”

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