The former Great Northern Paper Co. mill in Millinocket will be known as One North going forward as the nonprofit organization that owns the property continues to look for tenants to redevelop the defunct mill site and turn it into a hub for renewable energy jobs.
Our Katahdin announced the news Tuesday as the next step in its goal to transform the site into a hub for sustainable jobs in the state forest economy.
“For so many of us in the community, it will always be the GNP mill site, but we have realized that to communicate to the world the unique assets we have here in the Katahdin region, we needed a new name and vision for the site,” said Sean DeWitt, the president of Our Katahdin.
Our Katahdin bought the former mill site in 2017, and has leased parts of the site to new tenants, including a solar farm, a California technology firm that will open a data center there next year and a Portland startup that plans to use it as a testing site for a device that generates electricity using river currents.
The group also wants to bring aquaculture tenants to the site, even as a British firm’s plans to lease a salmon farm there have stalled, DeWitt said in February.
Millinocket has won a number of state and federal awards to repurpose the site, which cost the town hundreds of jobs when the paper mill closed for good in 2008.
In addition to aquaculture, Our Katahdin wants to attract other tenants in sectors like mass timber, pellets and small manufacturing, said Mike Faloon, Our Katahdin’s vice president of finance and investment.