Extensive demographic change brings jobs.

Certain aspects of the last 20 years weren’t a surprise: we were pretty sure that strong migration into the Midcoast of pre- and young retirees would continue - and it did with a vengeance, fueled by aging baby boomers. Their explosive demand for homes, health care, and services filtered through the economy. With them came real estate inflation, keeping property taxes high, but also jobs for a younger generation that increasingly built their own homes in the more affordable inland areas. The closely related tourism and arts sectors exceeded expectations, too, as prosperity in the New York – Boston corridor (now reaching into southern Maine) doubled the annual rate of tourism-related job growth, up from 1% to 2% annually, between the 2015-2030 time period.

Boom in defense, technology, knowledge-based jobs causes economic prosperity

The bigger surprise was at the south end of the corridor. A combination of global tensions and a changed political environment led to a national, two-shipyard strategy and expanded funding for the DDG 1000 destroyer program, as well as a new coastal warship program. BIW, one of the two shipyards, had cut its workforce by half come 2008, but by 2015 returned to a steady, 6,000-person level – well below historic highs, but a good, efficient, confident number. In nearby Brunswick, the Mid-Coast High Tech Air Park – formerly BNAS -- brought in Air Lobster, a general aviation operation, and benefited from both the continued growth of the Portland metropolitan area and expansion of the advanced materials, electrical instruments, and engineering sectors in southern Maine. In just a dozen years, it replaced the jobs lost when the naval air station closed, and added several hundred housing units, including workforce homes, to boot.

At the other end of the corridor, Bank of America proved skeptics wrong: it didn’t grow its Belfast workforce, but, by employing next-generation information technology, it maintained it. Mack Point is at capacity, and new east-west multimodal connections, including the successful operation of the Maine Montreal and Atlantic rail line across Maine, opened up markets for a new container port at Searsport.

The economic news in the middle of the corridor was good, too. It reflected a newfound optimism in Maine about its role in the nation’s knowledge-based economy. Bigelow Laboratory, for example, pioneered microbial detection technologies, with several business spin-offs; and leaseholds for high value shellfish aquaculture more than tripled. In all, this growth more than offset continued losses in long-standing industries like paper and groundfishing. Stocks of groundfish in the Gulf of Maine did not recover to levels that allowed recovery of the Mid-Coast’s historic fleet. But—perhaps due in part to the diminished populations of groundfish predators—the lobster fishing industry, aided by forward-looking management and predictive models, sustained its high levels of catch.

With this alignment of the economic stars, the region’s population grew at twice the rate projected earlier in the century. In addition to retiree in-migration, a new, younger labor force emerged. In the early part of this period, housing required by the labor force continued the long-time pattern of lot-by-lot construction along rural roads. But communities in the mid-coastal counties saw a steady march of large tract subdivision development – a new phenomenon for many -- primarily in sections inland of Route 1, including close to lakes and preserves.

In addition, the increased demand for services and municipal revenues encouraged several communities to compete for new “big box” development, causing additional spot congestion, affecting visual quality, and further impacting the viability of downtowns. A number of towns expanded staff to keep pace with demands for services, but planning board meetings became increasingly hostile and acrimonious. More and more, towns relied on new subsurface wastewater disposal technologies to serve growth and hold off the need for centralized treatment plants.

Growth causes pressure on housing, scenic quality

The faster-than-projected growth was double-edged. On the one hand, it gave impetus to downtowns and the “creative economy.” On the other hand, certain sectors of the economy – tourism and elder care especially – were unable to recruit employees at wages that matched housing costs. And it raised tensions in many communities, with a non-stop debate over a degrading natural environment, scenic quality and loss of rural character. For example, the miles of Route 1 “stripped out” tripled over a 20-year period and now directly affect a third of the mid-coast corridor. In this debate, the voice of newcomers – both retirees and new technology workers – became louder than in the past, as they began to outnumber long-time Mainers and demand “quality of life” measures. Land trusts thrived, but their focus was not on transportation corridors, and strip development jumped Route 1 and 90 boundaries to expanding sections of Routes 17, 27, 3, and other local roadways.

More transportation funds available, but Route 1 suffers severe congestion

New legislation brought enough federal dollars to the state to build the consensus-driven Wiscasset bypass and a new Route 1 connector to the former BNAS. Transit was expanded in the Bath-Brunswick corridor and on the Boothbay peninsula. But congestion and safe cross-town travel remained high-profile issues - projections were for more lanes to accommodate tourists and the growing local traffic, especially in Brunswick-Bath and Rockland and Belfast. Another contributing factor to congestion was the large increase in commuters from inland towns, headed to the coast to fill the construction, service, and technician jobs in the corridor. Funding and authorizations to extend passenger rail service from Portland to Brunswick were secured, making the Rockland Branch more attractive to both freight and passenger operators. While their unused capacity remains high, the turn of-the-century Rockland Branch and rail station investments in Brunswick, Bath, and Rockland do have a benefit. Seasonal excursion service, which had operated only a few days a month for a few months of the year, expanded to daily service for a full six months of the year. While small cruise ship services increased slightly, the lack of good connections from main roads or rail lines discouraged further expansion. New, flexible highway design standards adopted by MaineDOT in the early part of the century allowed for context sensitive solutions to highway improvements but they were overshadowed by the increasing number of strip malls that demanded wider roads to safely accommodate turning traffic.

All of the good news was not without concerns, however. In addition to rising tensions over environmental quality of life, two clouds loomed on the horizon, both largely outside the region’s control: energy costs and sea level rise. Prosperity in the northeast, including Maine, put enormous pressure on energy sources. While renewables increasingly became mainstream, the economy was still petroleum-based, and per barrel prices, now consistently around $100, translated into long-standing pump prices in the mid-$3 range. And cracks were beginning to show in the coastal real estate market, both because baby boom retirees had passed their buying peak and because of high-profile warnings about sea level rise, now at about two inches per decade. These warnings translated into insurers and regulators imposing higher standards on coastal development.

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FULL WIND: Growth in the Midcoast is full steam ahead!
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