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LESSONS FROM CANADA

Saint John revitalization effort offers lessons for Maine

Saint John of the 1990s faced challenges similar to those Maine is facing today

BY MATTHEW STONE Staff Writer

AUGUSTA -- Saint John, New Brunswick, had no trouble shedding population throughout the 1990s, but it had a tough time shedding what it wanted to: its reputation as a gritty port city.

If the metropolitan area of 122,000 in the Canadian maritimes stood to attract commercial investment and jobs, that wasn't a winning formula.

Stephen Carson, whose nonprofit, city-funded agency Enterprise Saint John guided the area through a recent revitalization, spoke Monday to a group of municipal officials, economic development proponents and others at the Augusta Civic Center for a conference on job growth in Maine.

Carson said the Saint John of the 1990s faced challenges similar to those Maine is facing today.

The key to Saint John's revitalization, he said, was a choice to first focus on establishing the Saint John area as a desirable place to live. Investment in the area, the reasoning went, would follow.

"We took the economic development model and turned it on its side," said Carson, chief executive officer of Enterprise Saint John.

The results? Educational attainment by local residents rose while the poverty rate dropped 28 percent, according to Carson, who added that the population has started to grow.

Saint John officials are awaiting eagerly the results of the next census to gauge their success in attracting and retaining young people -- a segment of the population that was prone to flee to Ottawa, Toronto and elsewhere throughout the 1990s.

Out of that period of population loss and aging emerged a sector of community members focused on reversing the glum statistics, Carson said. Enterprise Saint John was born out of that effort.

"We were known for a community that really didn't have its act together in terms of talking about priorities," Carson said.

To change this, Enterprise Saint John convened a series of sessions in which community members shared their vision for Saint John's future and ideas for realizing that vision.

"It's people, ideas and investment, in that order," Carson said.

Rather than bringing in a professional consultant to guide the city through its redevelopment, Carson said, Saint John decided to keep it close to home.

"The majority of what we needed to do was really based in our community," he said.

What the members of that community shared, Carson said officials found out, was a rich sense of their city's history.

"We had this sense of self that came from being one of the oldest cities in the New World," he said.

What ensued was a deliberate attempt to promote home-grown artists, development in the city's historic areas and an embrace of Saint John's port identity. The port, after all, was the entrance to the city for hundreds of thousands of cruise ship tourists each year. Those tourists would walk the city's streets and take in its cultural offerings.

The emphasis on cultural assets provided a solid foundation not only for tourism, but for attracting technology companies and top-notch professionals to run a new medical school, according to Carson.

"The technology companies today will grow their operations where people want to stay and their people are happy," he said.

Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, ext. 435

mstone@centralmaine.com