Staff Writer
LIMESTONE — Since its inception in 1994, the Loring Development Authority (LDA) has been making something out of virtually nothing and continues to do so despite the national recession. Though it may be irresistible to focus on national shortcomings during tough economic times, the LDA is focusing on what valuable business prospects may be waiting just beyond the horizon as well as the numerous positive aspects of business that are already in place.
Occasionally, prospective business endeavors and current business endeavors overlap, which is the case of Telford Aviation and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).
Whereas the LDA is currently in the process of turning parts of Loring into a testing facility for unmanned aircraft, a similar project is already under way.
“Telford Aviation and SAIC have had an operation up here where they have been developing an unmanned blimp to serve as a surveillance platform for Homeland Security and defense applications,” said President and CEO of the LDA, Carl Flora, “They put sophisticated sensors in the blimp and operate it either by remote control or by setting GPS coordinates into the system so that it could conceivably be programmed to fly the boarder, turn around and come back.”
“They had a smaller blimp that they had last year that flew about a bit, but they have built a larger one that’s over twice as large as it’s predecessor,” Flora added, “they haven’t started flight tests on that one that we’ve seen.”
Though using Loring as a cold weather testing area for unmanned aircraft would be a wonderful addition to other businesses at the LDA and even the consideration of prospective projects is good news, the LDA recognizes the value of what they already have:
“The most important things that are going on at Loring are really the numerous things that are already in place,” Flora said. “We’ve come from the day when this place was literally abandoned to the point where we now have 1,500 employees who come out here to work every day, and take home an annual payroll in the vicinity of $50 million dollars.”
Prior to the closure of the Loring Air Force Base, Aroostook County’s economy was based off of three major sectors – agriculture, forestry, and the Loring Air Force Base, according to Flora.
“According to one estimate I saw from the state planning office, they felt that the direct and indirect impacts of the closure removed about 20 percent of The County’s economy, and it’s a big county,” Flora stated. “We need to be careful to retain businesses and try to keep conditions that are conducive to keeping those jobs around while at the same time, continuing to push forwards where we think we have opportunities like the possibility of a potato processing plant, the unmanned aviation business and why Loring might make an ideal place to establish a center for unmanned aircraft, so those are opportunities and we will try to continue pushing forward in those areas,” Flora added.
According to Flora, about 50 percent of all the people that work in Loring are from Limestone and Caribou. The other half of the workforce comes from Fort Fairfield, Presque Isle, Van Buren, Conner, Woodland, and other surrounding locations.
Whereas the LDA is constantly pushing to bring in business for Limestone, Caribou, and the surrounding areas, it is possible that the state of Maine may be providing Loring with support of its own through Economic Stimulus Funds.
“The requirements that were explained to us for receiving government stimulus money is that they need to be projects that are shovel ready,” Flora explained. “They want things that can be done as soon as possible, we have some projects here, like repaving the roads or refurbishing the railroad, that could be under way this spring. Having a functioning railway would become a necessity if a company like Lamb Weston were to decide to build a potato processing plant in Loring — so if this is a convenient time to spend public infrastructure money, we have projects that are in need of funding and we would benefit from the completion of the projects,” Flora added.
