100 Years Ago: 1924

Miss Annie Barr, librarian at the Lewiston Public Library, gave a delightful reading of “Chinese Porcelain” to start the bringing about of a review of this wondrous art. The women were quite taken up with the books from the state library, which Miss Barr used in her talk. They were exquisitely illustrated and cost $100 for each volume.

50 Years Ago: 1974

Auburn police received an unusual complaint today.  A Louise Street resident told authorities that almost every day, a group of horseback riders utilize the sidewalks between Cook and Outer Main Streets as their route of travel. The caller said their practice not only causes a nuisance to pedestrians, but the animals often leave a mess on the sidewalks.

25 Years Ago: 1999

Paul Lavoie remembers having a lot of doors slammed in his face, when he and his partner David Sullivan shopped around for a loan to launch their business in 1986.

But when he approached Marty Dow, who was vice president and loan officer of Mid Maine Savings Bank with his business plan he got a different response.

“He just looked at it and I remember him saying, ‘This is just crazy enough to work.'”

Dow doubts he ever said that, but he does remember “I felt real confident about each one of those individuals and I felt they were a reasonable risk.”

Lavoie and Sullivan went on to launch Performance Product Painting, Inc.

They’ll be honored May 26 as Maine’s Small Persons of the Year at the Small Business Administration awards banquet held in conjunction with the Blaine House Conference on Small Businesses.

Performance Products Painting opened in 1987 as an industrial paint shop in a leased 10,000 square building. Counting Lavoie and Sullivan it employed six. The company generated $300,000 the first year promoting itself as a company that would paint anything as small as a dime or as large as a car. It specialized in painting refrigerator door handles.

Today in addition to industrial painting, PPP has expanded services to include adhesion and powder coating. It’s in the same building, but now measures 34,000 square feet and Lavoie and Sullivan own it. They employ 37 people and expect sales to reach $2.5 million this year.

“From the very beginning, they have seemed to just continue to grow,” said Lee Feldman, Auburn’s principal planner. “They found that business niche and they have just continued to grow and grow and grow.”

Lavoie and Sullivan won the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce’s Business Leadership Award for smaller firms last year.

The material used in Looking Back is produced exactly as it originally appeared although misspellings and errors may be corrected.

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