OXFORD — Jobs — how soon, how many and who will get them — dominated the conversation during an hourlong press conference Friday morning as the owners of Black Bear Entertainment detailed further their plans to build a $165 million resort and casino on Route 26.

“I’m not just in it for the money,” said Bob Bahre , a former owner of both Oxford Plains Speedway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway. “I’m in it for the jobs.”

He went on to quip he had earned 2,200 months of Social Security payments so he was,  “all set there.” The comment drew a laugh from the crowd.

Bahre, a long-time Oxford businessman, was among the group of owners who spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of about 100 or more during a press conference Friday at Oxford’s town hall.

Over the years the region has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs as first wood and then textile and then manufactured-housing factories closed, Bahre said.

The owners’ group had gathered to unveil the location — a 100-acre property on Route 26 about a half-mile from the Androscoggin County line in Oxford — of their casino project and to explain how it would be built.

“We don’t want to get rich, we’re just looking to work,” said audience member Bill Penfold, the owner of Oxford Auto Salvage and the vice president of VIP Charters, a bus-touring company.

Penfold told developers he’s worried that local independent contractors will be left out as Black Bear moves forward with the first phases of its resort development.

“People here, the people in Oxford County need the jobs,” Penfold said. Penfold said if Bahre had not been involved in the project he wouldn’t have been a supporter either.

“Still you don’t want to see the big contractors from someplace else get all the jobs when it’s the guy down the street who needs a job,” Penfold said.

Black Bear could break ground on a 65,000-square-foot building as early as next spring, said Jim Boldebook, a Black Bear partner.

Boldebook said they have set up a Web site where people interested in work could submit their names. He said that as Black Bear moves closer to construction they will review that list first.

Boldebook agreed with Bahre and the other Black Bear owners that while all the partners want to make money, they also want to create local jobs.

Suzanne Grover, another Black Bear partner along with her husband, Rupert Grover, said they have been employing local people at their company Grover Gundrilling in Norway for decades.

She said they were committed to the local work force and getting people back to work.

“We’ve invested here in Maine,” she said of the Black Bear owners group. “What we say we are going to do is what we are going to do.”

Penfold said he believed Bahre would keep his word to the local people, but wanted to attend the gathering and ask Bahre directly about his commitment, because the region is desperately in need of more employment.

Black Bear’s owners have said the casino, over time, will create an estimated 2,700 jobs. That includes 700 jobs at the resort, with another 1,000 support-related jobs in the immediate area and another 1,000 throughout the state.

The project was approved by a narrow 5,600-vote margin during a statewide ballot vote last week. Opponents to the project have requested a recount, which will start some time in late November.

After speaking before the crowd and fielding dozens of questions, Black Bear representatives took the media and others to look over the property where the resort will be built.

sthistle@sunjournal.com

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