Published: Aug 16, 2009 

The economy is weak, and people are generally in a sour mood. In fact, there’s even a national index — the Gallop Healthways Well-Being Index — that quantifies it. It hit an all-time low late last year for reasons we know all too well.

The Twin Cities have not been immune to the blues. Adding to the economic gloom, Lewiston-Auburn has been through some noteworthy trials recently. An inferno gutted one of our historic mills, the day after Lewiston’s city administrator was abruptly terminated. Additionally, we’ve heard or read about personality conflicts among elected officials in both Lewiston and Auburn, and the commission on joint services has had difficulty gaining ground and consensus after several years of effort.

Collectively, we’re understandably grumpy about all this turmoil. If it were measured, L-A’s Well-Being Index would likely be at a low point.
Much like this summer’s weather, though, it’s easy to forget that above the clouds, the sun still shines. Overall, L-A is full of good and well-meaning people, quality leaders, and sound companies working to make a difference here. There’s much about which to be proud and inspired.

In spite of a crippling national recession, L-A has benefited from some recent positive developments that would be impressive in any economy. TD Banknorth is creating a new customer service center and 300 new jobs at the Auburn Mall. Kellogg’s recently opened a 60,000 square-foot facility in the new Auburn Industrial Park. ACS announced it will hire an additional 130 people at its Lewiston center. Lufthansa has hired two dozen technicians to work on a two-year project to refurbish a historic Lockheed aircraft, to be completed in a new 30,000-square-foot hangar at the Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport.

There is plenty of additional good news. Both hospitals are renovating their emergency rooms and labs at a combined investment of $60 million. The Veterans Administration will site a new multi-million-dollar outpatient clinic in the Twin Cities over the next two years. Quality restaurants continue to open — most recently The Falls and Mother India — or re-open, as is the case of the much-anticipated rebirth of The Village Inn.

And just last week, the Androscoggin Bank Coliseé was selected as the site of the 2010 Maine Democratic Party Convention, the first time in 25 years the gathering will be held in L-A. An estimated $1 million-plus will flow into our economy, and we’ll have the opportunity to show 1,500 visitors how much we have changed and grown since the last visit.

On a more personal note, our company, which has had its share of economic challenges, just shipped (with the help of Outsource Works) the first wave of a new product collection for a major retailer. Being promoted as 100 percent USA Made, if these agendas and journals sell as they hope, we will invest in new equipment and add dozens of new manufacturing jobs here in town.

Our family is particularly proud that a new elementary school will open this September bearing the name Raymond A. Geiger. While my father would have loved the honor, he would also quickly refer back to our company’s arrival here from Newark, N.J. in 1955 — and our survival as a business. We came to Lewiston because the citizens united to give our firm a chance to get restarted, and we prospered because of the great people who have worked for us ever since. He loved this place — and the wonderful values and work ethic of it citizens.

If you think my message is that all is well in L-A, don’t be mistaken. Our community needs to put recent controversies and noise behind us and get back to the hard work of finding solutions to our challenges. However, it’s important to remember that L-A has faced adversity before and emerged triumphant.

Remember the U.S. Postal Service Distribution Center site selection process? Postal officials had announced Lewiston was the site choice, only to reverse course after succumbing to political pressure. A while later, Wal-Mart placed a 1-million-square-foot distribution center at the former postal site. Now we are seen as Maine’s new distribution and logistics hub.

If there’s one thing the Geiger family has learned over the years, it’s how resilient the people of Lewiston-Auburn are. We overcome adversity because when push comes to shove, we unite as a community and do what needs to be done.

We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. Let’s give our L-A Well-Being Index a makeover, and let’s take our considerable strengths and build on them.

Gene Geiger is chief executive officer of Geiger Inc. in Lewiston.

The Colisee, formerly the Central Maine Civic Center, has undergone substantial renovations over the past several years, and now attracts a number of special events in addition to serving as the home of the Lewiston MAINEiacs hockey team.

According to the Lewiston Sun Journal, the last time the convention was held in Lewiston was in 1984. Conventions typically attract between 1,500 and 2,000 attendees, and offer a chance for gubernatorial candidates to speak to party members about their issues prior to the June primary.

Gov. John Baldacci will be barred from seeking a third term as Maine governor due to term limits.

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Bisson Transportation, Building Solutions, LLC, and Maine Oxy were the winners from the City of Auburn, while Estes Express and Saint Mary’s Health System (formerly Sisters of Charity Health System) were recognized by the City of Lewiston. A special Joint Economic Achievement Award was presented by both cities to WGME-13.

Bisson
Founded in 1919, Bisson Transportation, Inc. is one of Maine’s oldest, largest and most diversified transportation companies. With facilities in West Bath, Auburn, Westbrook, Fairfield, Skowhegan, Jay and Rumford, Bisson employs or contracts with over 300 individuals. Bisson’s truckload freight, freight brokerage and yard services division is headquartered in a beautiful new 103,000 square foot building located in the Auburn Industrial Park.

From this location, 80 tractor trailers transport freight throughout the continental United States. Bisson also provides on-site yard management services at three of Maine’s largest paper mills. Through its affiliate LynxUS, LLC, Bisson provides commercial warehousing, shuttle and trans-loading (truck and rail) services, paper converting/re-winding and inventory management services to a growing list of clients.

Building Solutions
Building Solutions is a design/build firm providing total turnkey projects from planning, permitting, architecture, engineering, and construction to occupancy, including landscaping and specialty equipment installation.
 
Building Solutions has become popular with out-of-state clients who don’t have time to frequently stay on-site to manage a project. Over the past five years, Business Solutions completed major development projects for Western Maine Transportation, Toddle Inn, World Harbors’ sauce production expansion, and construction of two warehouses. 

Maine Oxy
Maine Oxy was founded in 1929 under the name Maine Gas Service, providing sales and service to home propane customers. In 1935, Maine Oxy was incorporated as Maine Oxy-Acetylene Supply Company and began providing welding supplies and industrial gases.

Maine Oxy has expanded to a company with multiple sales and manufacturing sites and currently operates from eight locations in Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Further expanding in 1993, the Spec-Air Gases and Technologies division was established, leading the industry in replacing disposable calibration gas cylinders with refillables. The New England School of Metalwork is the company’s most recent addition, offering two core programs in welding and blacksmithing.

Estes Express  
It’s difficult to travel on any major highway without passing one of Estes Express Lines’ 22,000-plus trailers. Established in 1931 with a single truck making deliveries in southern Virginia, Estes has grown into one of North America’s largest and most comprehensive trucking distribution companies, with over 13,000 employees and 200 terminals in all 50 U.S. States and Canada.

When Estes began to outgrow its Maine distribution center in Scarborough in 2006, they looked to Lewiston for a site for a new facility.  Lewiston was particularly suitable because of its developable land near the Maine Turnpike and its centralized location to much of Maine’s population.  Estes settled on a site along River Road for its new 37-door, 15,000 sq. ft. facility that opened in May 2007. The new facility brought 38 new full-time jobs to Lewiston.

St. Mary’s
Since the Sisters of Charity first arrived from St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, in the late 1800s to serve the needs of Lewiston’s early mill workers, the Sisters of Charity have been diligent stewards of the area’s physical and social well-being.  Today, St. Mary’s Health System operates a state-of the-art medical facility offering a comprehensive range of medical services, including St. Marguerite d’Youville Pavilion, the largest nursing home facility north of Boston.  Last October, St. Mary’s opened its Center for Joint Replacement, Maine’s first center dedicated to this increasingly important sector. This $1.7 million facility located within St Mary’s Medical Center features 16 modern, private rooms designed in part by previous joint replacement patients.   

St. Mary’s also recently completed its new Nutrition Center in the former Wallace School in downtown Lewiston.  The Center provides nutrition-related services for residents in the community and provides resources for others providing similar services across Maine. In the coming year, the Medical Center’s Emergency Department will double in size —the first such upgrade in 17 years—and the establishment of a new ambulatory center is slated in Auburn. 

WGME-13
As evidenced by sponsorship of such events as the Great Falls Balloon Festival, the United Way of Androscoggin County’s Annual Campaign, the Androscoggin Business to Business Trade Show, and the successful “L-A: It’s Happening Here!” community branding campaign, WGME-13 intrinsically links its mission of providing TV programming with being responsible community citizens.

It has also increased its news coverage of L-A dramatically over the last five years, reporting on such trends as L-A’s economic renaissance, diverse job creation, and the community’s meteoric growth in arts and entertainment offerings. As a result, Maine has had a reawakening to L-A’s many attributes, and WGME-13’s viewership numbers have risen dramatically too.

The Economic Achievement Award winners were recently honored at the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council’s Annual Dinner and Business Forum.

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Lufthansa’s Labor of Love:
Restoring Some Really Old Junkers

Antique Aircraft Are a Company Sideline;
A Salvage Mission to Auburn, Maine

By DANIEL MICHAELS
June 16, 2008; Page A1

HAMBURG, Germany — After inspecting the latest addition to Lufthansa’s fleet, veteran airplane mechanic Jürgen Rohwer braced himself for hard work ahead.

“This is the most complicated aircraft we could get,” said the silver-haired 67-year-old engineer, studying pictures of cockpit controls and wiring at the headquarters of Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s maintenance unit here.
WSJ’s Dan Michaels reports how German carrier Lufthansa refurbished a 1936 Junkers 52 propeller plane and then sold thousands of tickets to people wanting an old-fashioned joyride.
But Mr. Rohwer isn’t working on a cutting-edge Airbus or Boeing jetliner. The task at hand demands far more ingenuity: resurrecting a grounded Eisenhower-era Lockheed propeller plane.

Lufthansa flies some of the world’s newest jetliners. But it also has a unique sideline rebuilding and flying antique aircraft. Enthusiasts wait months and pay €259 ($400) for a bumpy hourlong ride on a 1936 Junkers-52 propeller plane that Lufthansa bought in 1986. The 16-seat Ju-52 is so delicate that engineers rebuild it each winter to ensure safety.

Work is starting now on the Lockheed 1649A Super Constellation “Starliner,” which Mr. Rohwer’s bosses bought at a bankruptcy auction in Maine last December. They hope to start flying it in 2010.

Once, many carriers maintained their antiques to show off, but years of financial pressure have put an end to most of that. Today, it’s mainly consumer companies like Swiss watchmaker Breitling SA and Austrian energy-drink maker Red Bull GmbH that pay to recondition aviation relics as flying billboards.

Lufthansa, whose jetliner operations are profitable, can afford its costly projects partly because active and retired employees volunteer to reconstruct, maintain and fly the old planes. In a country that produces some of the world’s finest cars, sleekest home appliances and most-precise industrial tools, mechanical savviness is a badge of honor.

Capt. Georg Spieth, 51, is one of 20 top Lufthansa pilots who fly the Ju-52 in their spare time. “We’re quite lucky to do this,” he said before taking it up recently. “There’s a really long list of captains waiting to fly it.”

Capt. Spieth’s wife, Ingrid, volunteers as the plane’s flight attendant.

Maintenance Crew

Mr. Rohwer, whose two sons are Lufthansa mechanics, was selected from dozens of volunteers to help resuscitate the Starliner. In addition to decades of work modernizing jetliner cockpits for Lufthansa, the old-timer has a special qualification: He served on crews maintaining Lufthansa’s Starliners in the 1960s.
Lufthansa 
The standard Starliner carried 86 passengers, but a swankier version could carry just 30 high-flyers in supreme luxury.
Back then, Lufthansa marketed the Starliner as its “Super Star.” A Starliner flew the longest-duration scheduled flight ever, a 23-hour-19-minute trip from London to San Francisco — a hop jetliners now cover in less than half the time.

Lufthansa’s standard Starliner flew 86 passengers, but a swankier version carried 30 highfliers in luxury. Some slept in beds, behind curtains. Newfangled in-flight entertainment included tape players and loudspeakers.

Onboard Chef

An onboard chef, squeezed into a small kitchen, whipped up meals to suit passengers’ whims. German delicacies served included potato pancakes, “a dish highly appreciated and frequently requested by passengers,” according to Lufthansa’s corporate history.

The Starliner, introduced in 1956, was the last of many Constellation versions Lockheed built over 16 years. Each had increasingly elaborate equipment such as autopilot systems, hydraulic pumps and windscreen defrosters.

The complicated four-engine Starliner had lots of problems, Mr. Rohwer recalls. The plane’s massive 3,000-horsepower engines — designed for optimal performance high in the sky — overheated regularly on the ground. The plane’s violent vibration snapped wires. Spark plugs crusted over. Starliners frequently returned to the airfield shortly after takeoff because of technical difficulties. None of the planes ever crashed.

“We had lots of trouble with that aircraft,” recalled Mr. Rohwer, who joined Lufthansa in 1957 at age 16 and retired from the airline’s maintenance arm, Lufthansa Technik, two years ago.

ON THE JOB

Engineering Veteran Plays Key Role”Some people say this was the best three-engine plane ever, because one engine was always out,” chuckled Mr. Rohwer.

Starliners last flew in the 1970s, but the iconic plane continued attracting fans. In the 1980s, Maurice Roundy, a 63-year-old pilot, aircraft mechanic and airfield manager in Auburn, Maine, bought three Starliners for their scrap value. He started rebuilding them, but after spending $500,000 of his own money on the effort, he ran out of cash and last year filed for bankruptcy-court protection.

“I think the airplanes owned me,” said Mr. Roundy, who paid his debts by getting rid of the planes.

Headed to Auction

When Lufthansa Technik Chief Executive August Henningsen heard that three Starliners would go under the gavel, he jumped into action. After inspecting the planes last November in Maine and Florida, Mr. Henningsen sent his deputies to the auction in December. Slowed by a Maine snowstorm, they arrived just in time to land the three planes for a bid of $745,000.50.

Lufthansa now plans to fully restore one Starliner in Auburn, using parts cannibalized from the other two.

To prepare, Mr. Rohwer spent two weeks in January in Auburn and at the offices of Lockheed Martin Corp. in Texas. Lockheed archivists found 11,000 boxes of the plane’s engineering drawings, certification documents and maintenance records that Mr. Rohwer and his colleagues will use for their work.

Mr. Rohwer, a private pilot who builds model steam trains for fun, will handle the Starliner’s cockpit. To get the plane certified by air-safety regulators in the U.S. and Europe, Lufthansa will install modern flight controls, as it has done on the Junkers.

New Control Panel

For safety’s sake, Mr. Rohwer must include similar consoles, dials and switches as a giant Boeing 747 has on its flight deck. To cram them into the Starliner’s far smaller space, Mr. Rohwer says he will use a handful of digital screens that can replicate dozens of different control panels.

Since the Starliner sits an ocean away in Maine, Mr. Rohwer’s team will first install equipment in a cockpit mock-up in Hamburg. Then they’ll ship that to Maine and rewire it directly to cables and hydraulic pumps that other engineers are refurbishing.

While the cockpit will glow with modern electronics, the passenger cabin will evoke a bygone era. Walls will be covered in beige leather. The large round windows will have fabric curtains.

“The cabin will look like the 1950s — but with seat belts,” promises Bernhard Conrad, who is running the project and also is chairman of the Lufthansa nonprofit foundation that owns the old planes.

Mr. Rohwer says he isn’t interested in flying on the Starliner. He’d rather just hear the engines’ low rumble as the plane cruises slowly by.

“The most unusual thing is the sound,” recalls the mechanic. “It’s much more interesting than being onboard.”

Write to Daniel Michaels at daniel.michaels@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications:

Red Bull GmbH is an Austrian company. The initial version of this article said it is German.

In an occasional feature entitled “Port of Call,” editors dedicated a 21-page spread on some of Lewiston-Auburn’s unique assets and recent sources of pride, including a feature on a business boom taking place in L-A, the addition of Fuel Restaurant and Gallery 5, and profiles on The Public Theatre, Museum L-A, and The Maple Room, to name a few.

The publication’s style, voice, and format are reminiscent of Downeast Magazine’s issue-long nod to L-A in 1999.

Publisher and Editor Laurie Hyndman writes, “Innovations in the arts, exciting restaurants, and collaboration between the two towns are creating a buzz across Maine.”  

Communities from all over the country participated in the two-day event, which was held at the Anaheim Marriott in Orange County, California, in early June. Lewiston had been named a finalist last year, but narrowly missed the designation until this year. The other winning communities were:

Flowing Wells, Arizona (neighborhood)
Santa Rosa, California
Sierra Madre, California
Hollywood, Florida
Polk County, Florida
Dubuque, Iowa
Barnstable, Massachusetts
Clinton, North Carolina
Hickory, North Carolina
“These All-America cities symbolize the spirit of grassroots democracy and community problem solving,” said Gloria Rubio-Cortés, president and CEO of the Denver-based nonprofit organization that awards communities for outstanding civic accomplishments. “Their award-winning efforts addressed some of the most difficult challenges facing communities today.”
 The 2007 winners tackled tough community issues such as healthcare, environmental protection, demographic change, economic development, promotion of the arts, innovations in parks and recreation programs, cultural diversity, education, neighborhood revitalization, youth involvement in local decision-making and public safety.
After an extensive application/screening process, each finalist community sent a delegation of civic activists to present three examples of collaborative community problem solving. A “jury” of experts on local government and community affairs selected the ten winners based on their stories of positive community change. The winners were selected in part for their ability to engage a broad cross section of the community, including youth, business leaders, elected officials, city staff and nonprofit groups in civic dialogues leading to tangible results.
 Now in its 58th year, the award is an honor achieved by more than 500 neighborhoods, villages, towns, cities, counties, and regions across the country. Some have won the award multiple times, and Auburn has been a previous winner.

(LEWISTON, ME) – Lewiston-Auburn is one of the safest places in which to live in the U.S., according to a recent ranking from the Farmers Insurance Group of Companies.

According to the third annual “Most Secure U.S. Places to Live” ranking, Lewiston-Auburn finished 15th among small areas with fewer than 150,000 people. According to a report from PR Newswire, the rankings were compiled by database experts at www.bestplaces.net who factored into their criteria crime statistics, extreme weather, risk of natural disasters, environmental hazards, terrorism threats, and job loss numbers. Data was compiled for 379 U.S. municipalities.

The most secure location to live in the United States is St. George, Utah, which is also among the small areas category. Bangor also finished 14th in that listing. In the large metro category, defined as areas with 500,000 or more residents, the most secure place was Boise City-Nampa, Idaho. Among mid-sized cities, or those with populations between 150,000 and 500,000, Las Cruces, New Mexico earned that distinction.

Farmers Insurance is the nation’s third largest personal lines property and casualty insurance group. Headquarterd in Los Angeles – the “other L-A” – it boasts providing insurance and financial services to more than 10 million households. 

1 1/2 story Cape Cod house is the oldest in downtown Auburn and is preserved as it would have appeared in the 1800s. Adjacent one-room shoe shop shows tools and methods used in the 19th century. Call for times.

The September/October issue of Business Development Outlook (BDO), an economic development trade publication, ranked metro areas in a number of categories including housing, climate, health care, transportation, education, and other quality of life issues. In the health care category, cities were analyzed on various criteria including average cost of doctor/dentist visits, air quality based on six EPA measures and ozone days, water quality, and number of physicians per capita.

Long Island topped the list, in large part because of the number and caliber of its medical schools, teaching hospitals, and physicians. A number of other New England communities were ranked among the top 30, including Boston, Hartford, and Burlington. L-A was one of only two Maine communities – the other was Portland — in the top 32 places featured.

“Any organization desires a location that will allow the healthiest lifestyle and medical resources for its employees,” wrote the editors of BDO. “No matter what circumstances may arise in the boardroom or in the warehouse, employees need to be healthy in order to live well.”