Diane Ray said it best. “That’s good,” the acting director of the River Valley Growth Council, said recently about a $37,520 grant to benefit the maligned River Valley Technology Center. “Now we just have to deliver.”

The River Valley has been waiting three years for the center to deliver on promises of job creation, retention and incubation. So far, results have been mediocre, but an upswing is upcoming, buoyed by the refreshing attitudes of the center’s new leadership.

The technology concept was flawed from the start. Inspired by reductions in traditional mill work force, the center came along too late to serve displaced workers. Without this critical raw material – a talented, available workforce – a key chit in business negotiations was lost.

Unanticipated problems also arose. The infrastructure of the former bag mill was found unsuitable for supporting heavy machinery, even though the technology center was designed for this primary purpose. In an unforgiving business climate, these setbacks spelled trouble for the center’s viability.

It’s still operating in the red. It still has its mind-boggling $30,000 annual electricity bill. It still has unfinished floors and a dearth of tenants. It still has elected officials in neighboring Mexico wondering whether the town’s $400,000 obligation – secured in return for creating 40 jobs – will wind up wasted.

What the center does have is leadership with the right attitude about its future. Most important, these stewards have adopted practical approaches toward management, instead of seeming to just hope for the best.

Negative appraisals of the center were well-deserved. In baseball terms, it swung for the fences rather than string together singles and sacrifices. The defunct Fractionation Development Center was the last swing and a miss in the River Valley’s home-run cut.

The attention now is upon viability, technology center leaders said during an editorial board meeting with the Sun Journal this week. Finding revenue – wherever, and whenever possible – to keep the center’s doors open and potential apparent is the goal, and Ray says some good prospects for tenancy have come forward.

Seeing the building thrive – even with off-mission tenants, like dental offices or culinary artists – would be a major coup for this administration, given the myriad transportation, taxation, education and other obstacles to economic development in Western Maine.

When the center’s woes first became public, we said the first step for dealing with problematic technology centers (not just Rumford’s was flailing) was admitting the concept was a failure.

The new direction of the center seems to acknowledge this reality.

This is not a bad thing. For the technology center to thrive, its leadership needed to realize its strategic shortcomings, and change direction toward reasonable, attainable economic and employment goals.

Bravo to them for doing so now, a critical first step.