Bangor has entered the debate over a new national park in Maine’s North Woods and, from the economic analyses, it’s a no-brainer for the city.
But the upside is not so clear for other cities and towns that don’t have Bangor’s economic base, rooted in growing health care employment.
In a review of past research from a range of Maine economists, a 2013 two-part study by Headwaters Economics, and commissioned by Roxanne Quimby’s land-holdings company Elliotsville Plantation Inc., posited the economic benefits of a national park, which it noted would come most immediately for Bangor.
That’s partly because Bangor has a leg up in what economist and Bowdoin College professor emeritus David Vail wrote in a 2007 paper is a “chicken and egg dilemma” for getting mobile entrepreneurs to remote places.
Bangor’s health care sector gives the area a place to start with an industry that provides relatively high-paying jobs, has adequate demand with an aging population and depends in large part on the world’s largest purchaser of goods and services: the United States government.
In the 2007 paper, Vail suggested Maine’s rural areas focus on a “lead sector” that can pave the way for others. Authors of the 2013 paper suggest the case of Kremmling, Colorado as one such example.
But the study notes that economic differences that already divide different parts of Penobscot and Piscataquis counties present challenges for the area that a national park alone would not solve.
As a result, a national park’s benefits for other parts of Penobscot and Piscatquis counties Headwaters studied are less certain.
For those areas, the study estimated that a joint national park and national recreation area would have some direct economic impacts, in terms of some well-paying federal government jobs and some amount of support for tourism and support sectors in neighboring communities, but an exact tally of jobs and associated economic impacts is not as clear.
Ben Alexander, associate director with Headwaters, said to get at an initial estimate of traffic to the new park, the Maine economists involved in the study suggested it assume some fraction of visitors to Acadia could build an itinerary that would involve visiting both parks.
As for how much those jobs would pay, the outlook is not as good.
The study notes that “there is no doubt that… low-wage, seasonal tourism jobs cannot replace family-wage jobs in manufacturing.”
Overall, annual averages of the unemployment rates for Penobscot and Piscataquis counties have been declining since 2010, but remain higher than the state’s unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted) through the end of 2014.
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The picture is more stark in recent years for wood products manufacturing, the study notes.
Manufacturing jobs and related wages (not adjusted for inflation) have continued to decline since 2010 but have held steady in Piscataquis County. Since 2001, manufacturing in Penobscot County has been cut nearly in half and were down about 34.5 percent for the same period in Piscataquis County.
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Recovering those lost rural jobs in traditional industries brings new challenges, as they face increasing global competition for commodities, like raw wood products.
The study concludes the way forward for the region is finding specialized niches for the timber industry, building on regional strength in the health care industry and bringing more tourism to the region. The authors argue a new national park could play some role in doing the latter, but not on its own.