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By Carol Coultas

While car dealerships are taking a hit nationally, Berlin City Toyota and Lexus is increasing the size of its Portland dealership, acquiring property to expand its service center and increasing its inventory display space by about 20%.

Rod Buscher, CEO and president of Berlin City Auto Group and its parent company, Summit Automotive, told Mainebiz if all goes as planned, the upgrade will be finished within a year.

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By The Mainebiz News Staff

More Mainers were hired in January than who filed for unemployment, a heartening indicator that perhaps the recession's impact on job losses has stabilized.

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By The Mainebiz News Staff

Fraser Papers will furlough as many as 600 workers at its paper mill in Madawaska for up to two weeks because of a lack of confirmed orders, according to the Bangor Daily News.

The furlough is part of company's new policy to better manage its cash flow by not creating speculative inventory. The Toronto-based company initially said it would temporarily shut down two paper machines at its Madawaska plant, but it will now idle four of the mill's six machines, leaving only 112 of the mill's 712 workers, the paper reported.

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By The Mainebiz News Staff

The University of Maine System has opted not to send more than 2,000 staff members on a two-day unpaid leave as a budget balancing mechanism, according to a joint statement from the system and employee bargaining groups.

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By The Mainebiz News Staff

Maine's Attorney General's Office has ordered a South Portland company that sells military uniforms to reimburse nearly $19,000 to armed service personnel for failing to fill orders.

MAACS Inc. and its owner Allison MacDonald must pay $18,716 in reimbursements to nearly 100 soldiers for airman battle uniforms that were paid for but not delivered, according to a press release from the Attorney General's office. MAACS will also pay a civil assessment of $5,000 and reimburse any additional claims within 30 days.

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By The Mainebiz News Staff

First Wind is in the advanced development stage for a wind farm in Rumford.

Reader comments

From Glen

Is this power going out of state? I feel we are being exploited by our neighbors to the south. First it was our homes now it is our mountains. I bet we would let them build a dam, especially if the power was going out of state.  

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By Douglas Rooks
Compress a construction job that normally takes several months into just six days. Add around-the-clock hammering and sawing and carpenters kneeling elbow-to-elbow. Stir in 36 hours of rain and shoe-sucking mud.

Sound like an ideal business opportunity? It did for Mike Wight.
Pitching in

While most of the heavy lifting at the "Extreme Makeover" site was performed by for-profit businesses, a number of non-profits also played key roles. None were more involved than the Penobscot Job Corps, which has helped disadvantaged youth ages 16 to 24 develop technical skills for 27 years.

The students of Valerie Moon, a culinary arts instructor at the Bangor agency, turned out in force to feed 400 hungry workers around the clock. Some 70 of the center's 288 students participated, from the culinary, homebuilding, facility maintenance and welding programs.

It was, she says, an ideal opportunity to give students a crash course in what to expect in the "real world" after graduation. "For some of our kids, this was an opportunity to put everything they learned together. They understood how the guys working on the house were dependent on them to keep going," Moon says.

Although the Job Corps students often apprentice before graduating, this put them to a different, more rigorous kind of test. "They knew they were being judged against the success standards of their profession," she says. In all, they logged 3,200 hours of community service, one of the Job Corps program's requirements.

The "Extreme Makeover" opportunity came about thanks to one of the Job Corps partners, oil supplier R.H. Foster Co. in Hampden, which also participated in the Milbridge show. "At one point we were worried about running out of water," Moon says. "There was always enough food, though. No one went hungry."

Brian Grant, 22, originally from New Gloucester, has been in the Job Corps program for 18 months, and he relished the chance to show his stuff. Other than one slide down a slippery ramp ˆ— "It hurt my pride, mostly" ˆ— he thought everything went like clockwork. "They expected a lot of us, and we were able to deliver," he said.

Job Corps Director Chris Kuhn admits the Hollywood angle did motivate students initially, but the sense of community kept them going. "It helped them do the hard things, even when they might have wanted to quit," he says. "It was the kind of lesson we could never have taught on our own."

Douglas Rooks

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By The Mainebiz News Staff

The Maine Public Broadcasting Network has abandoned plans to shut down a radio transmitter in Fort Kent and radio and television towers in Calais, under an agreement with state officials announced Thursday.

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By The Mainebiz News Staff

Maine's engineering and construction industry has the capacity to handle a significant increase in work anticipated from the federal stimulus bill, which is expected to be passed today or over the weekend, according to a new industry survey.

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By The Mainebiz News Staff

Theodore "Ted" Koffman, a Bar Harbor resident, will be Maine Audubon's next executive director.

Koffman is a former state legislator and director of government relations and summer programs at the College of the Atlantic. During his eight years in the Maine House of Representatives, Koffman was House chair of the Natural Resources Committee when the committee achieved a 95% record of unanimous decisions on bills concerning Maine's wildlife and environment, according to the Ellsworth American.

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