University of New England Official Backs Pharmacy School
By Tom Groening, Bangor Daily News, Maine
Nov. 8–CAMDEN — If the University of New England is successful in establishing a pharmacy school in Camden, the town could become a hub for biomedical research, a UNE official said Monday.
UNE has been in discussions with Camden as well as Rockland business and community leaders for more than a year about siting a four-year college in the former Knox Mill in Camden, said Ed Legg, UNE’s vice president for university relations.
“We very much want to establish a school of pharmacy in Maine,” he said. UNE has campuses in Westbrook and Biddeford. Both are constrained so that expansion there is impractical, Legg said.
UNE runs Maine’s only medical school, so adding a postgraduate pharmacy school makes sense for the institution, he said.
UNE has sent a letter of understanding to local officials “expressing strongly our interest not only in the school of pharmacy but in the [Camden] area,” Legg said. UNE’s board of directors has approved the concept, he added.
That letter, which stipulated that $10 million in seed money would have to be raised locally for the venture to move forward, was made public Friday at a meeting of an economic development task force in Camden. The task force wants to see the school established in the former Knox Mill, a 19th century textile production building on the Megunticook River that credit-card lender MBNA renovated into offices in 1994.
The school would accept 100 students each year, but would lose money in its first three years or so until it reached full enrollment, Legg said. The $10 million seed money would help offset that loss.
UNE draws biomedical research grants and would draw more with a pharmacy school, he said, which would be a boon to the area.
“There would be some product development spinoffs,” he said.
The school needs about 50,000 square feet for classes and offices, Legg said, leaving more than 150,000 square feet in adjacent offices formerly used by MBNA and in MBNA’s former offices in Rockland.
The other offices could become a biotech research complex, Legg suggested, perhaps joining with FMC Corp. in Rockland, which extracts substances from sea vegetation, to explore medicine from sea products.
A major wrinkle in the plans being pursued by UNE and the local officials is the fact that a Baltimore-based investment group, Maine Investment Properties, is buying the Knox Mill and adjacent buildings from MBNA.
MIP has filed plans with Camden’s town office to convert the mill to residential condominiums. The town planning board is scheduled to begin reviewing those plans this week.
The town task force is hoping to persuade MIP to wait for the UNE pharmacy school plan to come to fruition.
Adding a school of pharmacy has been on UNE’s drawing board for a decade, Legg said.
Camden and the Knox Mill rate highly as locations because of the first-rate office space at the facility and the vibrancy of the coastal community, he said.
“That facility would be ideal for it,” Legg said of the Knox Mill and adjacent buildings. “We continue to encourage them to pursue it. We think they’re making a good-faith effort,” he said of local officials.
“There are a lot of advantages to that area. It’s got a great lifestyle,” he said of Camden. UNE officials also like the fact that Camden is relatively close to Bar Harbor’s Jackson Laboratory and FMC in Rockland.
Legg also praised the regional approach being taken by the local chambers of commerce; the Camden-Rockport-Lincolnville Chamber and the Rockland-Thomaston Chamber are working collaboratively on the pharmacy school project, rather than competing.
UNE would like to have its campus in one self-contained facility, with student housing nearby.
There is an acute shortage of trained pharmacists — who can work in retail or in pharmaceutical research — in northern New England, Legg said, so graduates can start in jobs paying $80,000 t0 $100,000 annually.
“It’s a real need for the state,” he said.
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