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Maine Growth
By Laura Knoy on Thursday, November 3, 2005.
The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, is teaming up with members of the Maine community to launch an extensive and comprehensive study of the state's economy that will hopefully result in a blueprint for boosting Maine's economy while retaining it's character and quality of life. The report will address sprawl and other issues impacting the state and is targeted for a September 2006 release, just in time to be a point of discussion during Maine's gubernatorial and legislative campaigns. We'll look at the issues facing a growing Maine, how they plan to tackle them, and what impact, if at all, this pending report will have on the future of growth in the state. Laura's guests are Alan Caron, President and Founder of GrowSmart Maine and Bruce Katz, Vice-President of the Brookings Institution and Director of the Metropolitan Policy Program. Katz is directing the study on Maine’s Economy.
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I am from Maine, and I can tell you that most Mainers are concerned about growth... Not how best to do it, but how best to STOP it. Due to foreign competition, Maine's lumber industry is going out of business. About 1/3 of the state's land is unorganized wilderness formerly owned by these companies. Recently, most of this land has been sold to large investment companies (see: http://www.maineenvironment.org/nwoods/land_sales.htm), many of which are planning to sell off this land to developers at a absurd profits (these companies purchased paper company land generally around 200 dollars PER ACRE, and will turn around and sell them at 20,000 dollars per acre!). This is SCARY. It doesn't surprise me one bit with this much profit potential that there are big studies about growth. The quality of life preservation part of these studies, (while commendable) seems to me purely to find a way to keep the interest in moving to Maine such that they can sell land at the maximum amount possible. It all seems like a big real-estate hustle to me. Mainers (and everyone who appreciates the Maine woods) should be concerned about this, as Maine's wilderness is at stake.