MILLINOCKET, Maine — Anita Mueller wants all Katahdin region businesses on the map in the Digital Age.
The photographer, gift shop owner and former Town Council member is developing an application that the Katahdin Area Chamber of Commerce is marketing only to its members that will tell anyone with a smartphone or other hand-held device about the region’s businesses.
Expected to launch this spring, the Visitors App, as Mueller calls it, will highlight the region’s cultural history, park and conservation lands, outdoor recreation activities, diverse trail network and member businesses that support the region’s tourism economy. Though geared primarily as an aid to the region’s tourism businesses, the application also will showcase non-tourism chamber businesses — any chamber member that wants a listing, Mueller said.
“When they are looking at it, it will have value for local people in the region looking for basic services or businesses,” Mueller said Wednesday. “I really do think that this is a great opportunity for the region’s businesses to market themselves.”
Chamber members, Executive Director Jean Boddy said, hope the app will lead to an increase in visitors to the Katahdin region and in the membership of their organization, which represents 143 businesses. The chamber over the last several years has worked to expand itself beyond its traditional boundaries of East Millinocket, Medway and Millinocket and unincorporated areas outside of those towns. It now includes businesses in and around municipalities such as Patten, Sherman and Ashland, Boddy said.
The application is one of many non-governmental efforts within the Katahdin region over the last two years to strengthen the local economy. Since 2008, the Katahdin region has been devastated by the closure of paper mills in East Millinocket and Millinocket, which in turn contributed to vast unemployment, unprecedented numbers of foreclosures and a population exodus. Unemployment typically runs at double the state average, property values are at an all-time low and property taxes are very high in the region.
Dana Connors, president and CEO of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, said several of the state’s larger chamber groups, such as those in Portland and southern Maine, have been developing telephone applications to advertise their memberships.
“It is definitely a trend that is catching on,” Connors said.
Mueller, a chamber member who is being paid a small fee by the organization for developing the application, and the chamber are working to develop the app’s listing of businesses. Any business or chamber member interested in having a business listed in the application should call the chamber at 723-4443. Listings cost $50 annually.
Non-chamber members would have to join to get a listing. Depending on the number of people employed, chamber membership costs businesses $160 to $700 annually. Service and nonprofit organizations pay $125 annually, Boddy said.
When it is launched, the application will be available for free to online consumers at the Apple App, Google Play and Windows Phone stores.
No launch date has been set.