Our Katahdin: Bringing the Magic Back to Millinocket

In 2008, life in Millinocket, Maine, changed forever.

That’s when the Great Northern Paper Company–once the largest newsprint mill in the world–closed its doors for good. It had sprung up almost overnight on the West Branch of the Penobscot River a little more than 100 years earlier. Around it grew a bustling town, dubbed “The Magic City,” complete with a grand hotel, opera house, theater, and sports teams.

By the 1990s, the mill–which employed about 4,200 workers at its peak–started to falter as demand for its paper products fell, and many of the town’s residents soon left to find work elsewhere. Demolition began in 2014, after a series of attempts to keep it afloat fell through.

“When those stacks hit the ground, something happened in our community,” recalls Sean DeWitt, President of Our Katahdin, which promotes community and economic development in the Katahdin region. “I remember saying to myself out loud, ‘Okay, this isn't coming back.’”

Milliknocket Bandstand. Photo courtesy of Our Katahdin.

It was Sean’s mom who had the idea to bring a little holiday joy to the residents who remained in Millinocket and light the town’s bandstand–a place where jazz greats once played, kids would ice skate and the community would gather–as it had been during more prosperous times. He quickly put together a website, raised $600 in a few hours, and soon the bandstand was sparkling once again, much to residents’ delight.

That grassroots effort set in motion a collaborative volunteer movement–now known as Our Katahdin–to help Millinocket find its magic again. Sean recruited fellow sons and daughters of mill employees–his dad worked at the mill for 42 years–and together they continued raising money to fund community needs like new equipment for local youth sports teams and a community garden–about 50 projects in total, ranging from $500 to $10,000.

“All small, visible wins,” Sean explains. “There hadn't been a lot of positive things happening for a long time.”

In 2016, Our Katahdin took its first big step by purchasing 230 Penobscot, a former department store on the town’s main street, for $2,000. Then in January 2017, the group took ownership of the entire mill–all 1,400 acres of it, along with a few other sites around town. While the purchase price was only $1, they had to assume responsibility for millions in back local and federal taxes, along with environmental contamination. So they got to work.

“Our mantra all along has been, ‘we got to build back brick by brick,’” Sean says. “There’s no shortcut.”

2023 Spring Spruce-Up Day. Photo courtesy of Our Katahdin.

Since then Our Katahdin has grown to employ three full-time staff members. Together with the active volunteer board, they’ve raised and deployed $20 million to date in the local community, with funding from a variety of private philanthropic donors, including Sewall, and government funders, most notably, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They’ve also served as fiscal sponsor of the Katahdin Collaborative, an effort launched in 2019 to encourage collaboration in the revitalization of the entire Katahdin Region.

“We made a bet years ago that Our Katahdin would be critical to regional capacity-building and revitalization,” says Tom Boutureira, Sewall’s Katahdin Region Community Partner. “That bet has paid off in more ways than we ever dreamed, and if we were to calculate the resources that have been pulled to the region as a result of our operating support, it would be a multiplier effect of enormous proportions.”

To date, Sewall’s investment has been in the form of six Healthy People Healthy Places grants since 2017, including a 36-month grant for operating support awarded in 2022.

230 Penobscot Ave., Millinocket. Photo courtesy of Our Katahdin.

As of spring 2024, Our Katahdin is planning to break ground on transforming 230 Penobscot into an “Opportunity Hub” for local entrepreneurs and small businesses, complete with coworking and retail spaces. There’s also a wastewater treatment lagoon remediation project that’s due to start, which is bringing in roughly $12 million in both private and public funding.

Our Katahdin also recently launched the mill site’s new brand and website, One North, to entice tenants, ideally those focused on the cross section of industrial development and sustainability, that could leverage the area’s abundant natural resources. Currently a solar farm and hydro network that feeds the site with behind-the-meter affordable power, and the river’s cold, deep water has the potential to cool the world’s most sustainable data center.

“We want to look at the future of industry,” says Sean. “We want to look at the future of sustainable industry on that site that leverages our unique natural resource base and available renewable power.”

Other industries being considered include salmon farming, sustainable packaging, biocarbon, biofuels, cross-laminated timber, and other kinds of mass timber, as there's not a mass timber mill in the Northeast U.S. There are also opportunities in the sustainable tourism industry, since Millinocket is the jump-off point for Baxter State Park and Mount Katahdin, a popular New England hiking destination, as well as the northern end of the Appalachian Trail.

“They're not going to replace what the mill was even when it closed in 2008 in terms of direct jobs,” Paul Carney, the staff member in charge of maintenance at the mill site. “But it's the start of turning the tide and diversifying the economic base in the region.”