| In the next year,
Cianbro plans to demolish most of the existing buildings and turn the
mill into a manufacturing facility that will design, engineer and
assemble 1,200-ton self-standing steel building frames with piping and
electrical channels. The structures will stand up to five stories tall
and, when joined, will be able to house a wide range of industrial
facilities, Vigue said.
The tentatively
named Brewer Module Facility will employ 500 people initially, Vigue
said. He declined to reveal the cost of the project but said it reached
"multiples of seven figures."
The site also will
have a pier for barges that deliver supplies and transport the modular
structures, Vigue said. The city of Brewer will own the pier and will
allow other local businesses to use it, D’arcy Main-Boyington, Brewer’s
director of economic development, said in an interview.
Vigue said he
chose to locate the facility in Brewer because of its welcoming economic
development team, the surfeit of "hard workers" nearby and its proximity
to the Penobscot River and Interstate 95.
"Eight or nine
years ago, I began understanding the difference between the
availability, the quality of labor in Maine, and the demand for that
outside the state," Vigue said. He described a nationwide shortage of
highly skilled, technical workers and said Maine’s greatest asset is its
labor force.
"When I looked at
the trends, the demands outside the state of Maine, I wondered, ‘How do
we play that field without going out of here?’ … We see that there’s a
group of people in the northern half of the state who are not interested
in moving and are underemployed. They’re doing jobs below their ability
level."
Vigue said he
knows of only four major facilities on the East Coast and Gulf Coast
similar to the one he plans to build.
He said he
anticipates that the Brewer Module Facility will be successful, but
declined to list names of potential clients, citing confidentiality.
"We’re looking to
create a modularization facility to support all of North America, any
industrial medium," Vigue said. He said the company’s Baltimore office
has exported to China modules smaller than those planned for Brewer.
"We’re not new at
this game," Vigue said.
Clients likely
will purchase the steel for the modules and Cianbro will buy piping and
electrical equipment, Vigue said. He said he plans to purchase supplies
from Maine businesses whenever possible.
Modular structures
are in demand in most major industries, Vigue said, listing the
pharmaceutical, petrochemical, power generation and transportation
industries as examples. He said that in the future, new industrial
facilities would be standardized and modularized, rather than
customized, to save time and money.
Cianbro has
regional offices in Maine, Connecticut and Maryland and ongoing projects
in 15 states, including the construction of the new Hollywood Slots at
Bangor and the conversion of the world’s two largest offshore supply
vessels at Portland Harbor.
Widely known as a
heavy-construction firm, Cianbro said the Brewer Module Facility would
contribute to its efforts to diversify its services, which already
include modular construction and steel fabrication and coating.
"This further
broadens our capability as a company and our ability to take on a
variety of diverse activities and projects and does not limit us just to
the Northeast," Vigue said.
The company’s
gross annual revenue is approximately $350 million. Cianbro employs
about 1,300 people in Maine and 2,000 total on the East Coast. The
58-year-old company is 100 percent employee-owned, Vigue said.
Brewer City
Manager Stephen Bost said in an interview Thursday that he believes the
Brewer Module Facility has a promising future.
"This is going to
be here permanently, for years down the road," Bost said. "We were very
taken with Peter Vigue’s vision for revitalizing this region’s economy,
taking this employee sector, ramping them up to fill empty positions,
training them, and in so doing, capturing talent that might otherwise be
lost. That has a tremendous appeal to me and to the team."
The "team" is
South Brewer Redevelopment, which consists of Bost, Main-Boyington and
Tanya Pereira, Brewer’s economic development specialist. They have been
working nonstop to arrange the deal since Vigue approached them in late
January.
Because the Brewer
Module Facility will consist of "light construction," the facility will
have very few emissions from the construction equipment, Vigue said. A
few environmental concerns remain at the former mill site, including
asbestos and contaminants in the top 2 feet of ground soil. This summer,
Cianbro plans to begin site preparations while South Brewer
Redevelopment oversees an environmental cleanup of the site.
The project also
must receive approval from the state Department of Environmental
Protection and the Maine Department of Transportation.
A copyright story from the Bangor
Daily News, Saturday, June3, 2007. |
