Brewer honors Cianbro, Lowes, Principal McIntosh
Business of the Year, New Business, Citizen of the Year
Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Just after the pig roast began, but before Friday night high school football game, the city gave accolades to an elementary school principal and former mayor, and two new Brewer businesses, one that was named "Business of the Year."

City officials selected Cianbro’s new Eastern Manufacturing Facility on South Main Street as the "Business of the Year" for 2008, for attracting skilled, high-paying jobs to the former paper mill site.

The announcements were made during the seventh annual Brewer Days "A Hometown Celebration", held Friday and Saturday.

Lowes, a home improvement retail store that opened Feb. 3 on outer Wilson Street, is the "New Business of the Year" and Janet McIntosh, principal at both Washington Street and Capri Street schools, is Brewer's "Citizen of the Year."

"Both Cianbro and Lowes are examples of Brewer’s robust economic development climate," City Manager Steve Bost said Monday. "Both projects, in their own unique way, were eagerly anticipated and are already contributing to our community and region."

Lowes opened a 117,000-square-foot store with an adjacent 31,000-square-foot garden center that employs 150 full- and part-time employees. Cianbro changed the defunct Eastern Fine Paper Co. mill, which closed in January 2004, into a module manufacturing facility that now employs around 500 people.

The two new Brewer businesses are causing a ripple effect, spreading commerce into the region, Bost said.

School officials are "proud and pleased" about McIntosh’s selection, Superintendent Daniel Lee said on Monday. Lee sent out and e-mail on Saturday stating that "Principal McIntosh’s dedication to our community and its children is truly admirable."

McIntosh, who was hired by Brewer School Department in 2000, served as principal of Fourteenth Street School in Bangor between 2000 and 2006, and was a teacher in Bangor for the 29 years before that.

She served on the Brewer City Council between 1995 and 2001, and was mayor for 1997-98. McIntosh also is a member of All Souls Congregational Church, serves on the Brewer High School student services advisory team and Penobscot County commissioners budget committee. She sits on the Penobscot Regional Communications Center’s board of directors and is a counselor-assistant dean for Pilgrim Lodge.

"I can’t believe all the things that she’s done," Lee said.

McIntosh was nominated by a parent of one of her students, and on the nomination, that person wrote that "she is outside every morning with the kids greeting every one of them when they arrive" and "that Brewer is lucky to have her."

A copyright story from the Bangor Daily News, Tuesday, September 9, 2008, by Nok-Noi Ricker.