The family-owned company that had proposed building the world’s tallest flagpole in the woods of Washington County has dropped the project, according to the Maine Monitor.
Worcester Resources, which is based in Columbia Falls, had proposed to build a so-called Flagpole of Freedom that would have stood 1,461 feet tall — taller than the Empire State Building — and flown an American flag larger than a football field. Symbolically, it would have stood a total of 1,776 feet above sea level. The $1 billion project would also have included a 2,500-acre park.
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“The status is they are no longer proposing that project as envisioned,” an attorney for the Worcester Resources, Tim Pease, told the Monitor.
They will “no longer be pursuing the plan anywhere,” Pease said. “They are looking to the future and other ways to honor veterans.” Pease said he didn’t know the company’s reasons for canceling the project.
The Worcester family also runs a holiday wreath business and Wreaths Across America, an organization which commemorates veterans. It had proposed the flagpole project in the same spirit and argued that it would bring needed jobs and economic development to the region. It was to be partly funded through donations.
“We want to bring Americans together, remind them of the centuries of sacrifice made to protect our freedom, and unite a divided America,” the company’s founder, Morrill Worcester, told the Associated Press last year.
But the project was far-fetched from the start, with projections that it would bring 6 million visitors a year and create 5,000 jobs in remote Washington County. Under the company’s vision, it would have essentially built a community from scratch to support the operation, including miles of looping roads and gondolas, as well as multiple villages, campgrounds, a hotel, restaurants and shops.
The project also proved divisive, with opponents arguing that those resources would be better spent on direct services for veterans, and some area residents fearing it would spoil the natural beauty of the Down East region.
The decision to cancel the project came as Columbia Falls was set to vote in March on new codes that would prohibit such large-scale developments, according to the Monitor.
The Worcester family hoped to build the project on unorganized territory overseen by Maine’s Land Use Planning Commission, but it had sought to have Columbia Falls annex the land to help speed up the permitting. That led the town to pass a moratorium on large-scale development and consider the stricter rules that will be voted on in March.