RUMFORD – Rich Allen isn’t yet ready to concede defeat with the River Valley Technology Center despite the gloomy outlook painted at Thursday night’s selectmen meeting.

As president of the River Valley Growth Council, which manages the center, Allen said Friday afternoon that the center has enough money with which to remain open until July 1.

That’s more than the couple of weeks that tech center board President Dick Lovejoy told selectmen while pleading for $25,000 to keep the center going.

After July 1, Allen said he’s uncertain about the center’s future.

“It is a bleak picture,” he said. “If we don’t get funding support, our expenses will outpace our revenues and, I don’t think anybody has to be a rocket scientist to figure out what happens then.”

Conceived about nine years ago, the tech center was envisioned to be a metal trades business incubator.

It would be housed at 60 Lowell St. in the former Continental Paper Bag Co. mill, a four-story brick building constructed in 1899.

The center was the brain trust of an economic summit in 2000 or 2001 hosted in Rumford by former Gov. Angus King and his administration.

During that meeting, discussion centered on the underserved metal trades industry.

The plan was to renovate and retrofit the old mill, and then train employees on one side of the tech center. Equipment would be provided for them on the other side to grow a successful business.

That business could then move into the community to flourish and provide jobs, Allen said.

Things started to go wrong from the outset.

Allen said one plan was to build out the bag mill and another plan was for education funding. Overall plan dynamics changed when the training money came in a couple of years prior to actual completion of the building project.

Using the training money, 50 mostly displaced wood products mill workers were trained in metal trades through the Region 9 School of Applied Technology in Mexico and Central Maine Community College in Auburn.

However, Allen still counts that as a tech center success story for having improved the working lives of 50 people. They just don’t work in the River Valley area as envisioned.

Then, cost overruns in tech center construction induced the town of Mexico to take out a $400,000 Community Development Building Grant loan on the premise that 40 metal trades jobs would be created in the tech center, Allen said.

The growth council also took out a $250,000 loan from Bangor Savings Bank to help cover cost overruns for a project initially estimated at $2.4 million.

It actually came in at $3.2 million.

Then, the metal trades industry shrank and the King administration was replaced by one that didn’t favor technology centers not associated with Maine’s college system.

Thus, Maine’s annual funding of $90,000 to the center dried up, Allen said.

That’s when the RVTC changed its focus to any technology industry and landed a dental association tenant in 2008.

Now, they’re trying to build around that anchor and grow a health-care cluster.

When Community Dental moved in, two other tenants moved out, one of which was Northwest Precision Metals, the center’s first incubated success story.

With just five tenants and the council, the tech center needs another tenant to rent the second-floor’s remaining 6,500 square feet so the center can break even.

“With no funding at all, yes, doors can close,” Allen said. “There are some conversations and strong support out there for what the dental association means to the Rumford community.

“Without the dental association in there, we would be hard pressed to find a lot of support, but they did make a half million dollar investment,” Allen said. “They are there and I think that’s a positive that we can build around.”