Good managers are everywhere
Great managers have a way of transcending the industry they're in.
A good example is Bill Haggett.
He ran Bath Iron Works. He ran operations at Irving Shipbuilding. Miles from ships or the sea, he has helped bring profitability to a potato company. He is now running operations at Pineland Farms, where he's helping turn out new products while generating annual sales of $100 million.
Haggett sat down with Senior Writer Jim McCarthy for what I think you'll agree is a compelling look at Pineland Farms, which is based in New Gloucester. There's a lot of news in there as well.
Haggett also took time to write down seven management tips that could pay off in any number of industries.
“You can leave an industry like shipbuilding and do what I've been doing in working with potatoes, beef and cheese and pick up enough knowledge about each area so you feel comfortable dealing with their unique problems and challenges,” Haggett tells Mainebiz.
Oh, and did we mention Bill Haggett is 80 years old?
Elsewhere in the issue, the focus is on Bangor and the surrounding area.
Correspondent Laurie Schreiber, who is based in Bass Harbor, tackles two Bangor-area stories.
First, she has a story about the evolving success of the Bangor waterfront, which encompasses concerts, entertainment venues and a casino-and-racetrack. While the waterfront concert series has attracted the occasional noise complaint, it has seen its audience grow steadily. And there aren't too many people complaining about the economic impact, which, as Laurie reports, has shown a dramatic gain in the past four years.
The waterfront has seen significant investment, with new venues like the Cross Insurance Arena, as well as in the form of streetscape improvements and landscaping. As Laurie points out, the transformation of the waterfront is having a transformative effect on Bangor, lifting all boats, as they say.
Bucksport, which was founded in 1763 at the head of the Penobscot Bay, has experienced Revolutionary War naval battles as well as the more modern-day ups and downs of the economy, including turbulence in the paper industry. Its downtown reflects the fluctuations in the economy. While much of the downtown is directly off of Route 1, Bucksport grapples with downtown vacancies.
That's why we were heartened by Laurie's story about the rebirth of the downtown cinema, the Alamo Theatre, which dates to 1916. Over the years it has indeed been a movie theater, but it has also been a supermarket and a bar. Laurie talks to a pair of entrepreneurs that took over the theater space, first to use it as a film archive, but then, by popular demand, to screen movies. While Bucksport may not be where it wants to grow, the Alamo has helped revitalize the downtown, according to Bucksport Economic Development Director David Milan, who told Laurie the Alamo represents “quality of place.”
Elsewhere, Doug Rooks, a long-time Mainebiz correspondent who is based in West Gardiner, updates us on the Bangor Innovation Hub. It's one of five such hubs being developed by Blackstone Accelerates Growth. As Doug's story shows, Bangor's hub is very much a work in progress. But he has specific examples of businesses that have gotten their start with the hub's help, ranging from a video game designer to a vodka distillery.
One of the entrepreneurs Doug talked with, Christine Carney, summarized the situation she and her husband, John, faced, but also touched on a familiar theme in the Pine Tree State.
“From the time we were undergraduates, we knew we wanted to start our own business,” she says. “We just didn't know it could be in Maine.”
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