NORWAY – Enterprise Maine celebrated its 10th anniversary last week, attracting nearly 350 people for a reception and dinner at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School.
Business owners, investors, town officials and Enterprise officials listened as economist Jason Henderson of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City focused on the importance of a collective effort in developing communities, Enterprise Maine President Brett Doney said.
Enterprise Maine comprises five nonprofit and for-profit groups devoted to economic development in the Oxford Hills region: Growth Council of Oxford Hills, Western Maine Finance, Western Maine Development, Western Maine Community Capital and Maine Discoveries.
While Wednesday’s event was intended to showcase Enterprise’s successes over the last decade, Doney said, it was also meant to highlight its future goals and the fact that achieving them would not be easy.
He said Henderson, who has researched and written extensively on rural development and entrepreneurship, enumerated several “key common indicators in successful rural communities.” The common thread woven through his speech was that Oxford Hills residents have “got to work together” to create economically and socially vibrant communities.
Doney said businesses and business owners new to Oxford Hills, as well as recent modernization and redevelopment projects, were honored at Wednesday’s dinner. He noted Enterprise Maine had 58 new businesses to recognize since its last dinner 18 months ago.
Doney said he was recruited from Boston more than 10 years ago to become the Growth Council’s president and first employee. In 1994, Doney said, Oxford Hills had lost 15 percent of its manufacturing jobs, and the region’s unemployment rate was at 13.6 percent.
Since then, Doney said, the Growth Council and its newer sister groups have achieved some remarkable successes. He cited:
• Oxford Hills’ modular building industry gaining three companies and more than 650 employees
• 298 loans totaling $12,700,000 for various development projects
• assistance to more than 2,000 entrepreneurs
• addition of New Balance and L.L. Bean businesses
• more than $50 million from federal and state agencies for highway improvements.
Doney said he enjoys doing economic and community development work in Oxford Hills. It’s satisfying, he said, “being able to focus on a community that has a sense of community and has people who are engaged and want to get things done.”
Always at the top of the organization’s list, he said, is bringing higher wage jobs and a more diverse economy to the area.
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