The American kestrel is a handsome bird of prey with a wide wingspan, distinctive fan-like tail and a chiseled profile.
While they don’t cause much of a stir while perched on power lines in Maine, a Kestrel of a different sort landed with considerable fanfare last week at the Augusta State Airport.
The fledgling Kestrel Aircraft Co. announced plans to eventually bring about 300 manufacturing jobs to the Brunswick Naval Air Station.
The company will begin with 50-75 jobs, but hopes to eventually employ 300 people building six-to-eight seat, single-engine, turboprop planes made of composite materials.
Alan Klapmeier, Kestrel president, said Maine was chosen because of its leading research into composites, which combine various elements to make lighter and stronger materials.
That research is centered at the Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center at the University of Maine.
The Center houses two pilot plants: a Composites Extrusion Plant and a Strand Composites Plant.
It has been involved in designing housing components that can withstand hurricane-force winds, earthquakes and bomb blasts.
Hodgdon Yachts has worked with the center to build a prototype of a special operations boat that could be used by Navy Seals, and it is working on materials to build floating windpower platforms.
Now the state has attracted a high-tech manufacturer willing to invest $100 million in a aircraft project that will bring hundreds of jobs to the state.
But big developments like this don’t occur by happenstance or in isolation. They are the result of hard work, public/private partnerships and strategic long-term investments.
Maine voters decide on these investments every year at the ballot box when bond issues prepared by the governor and Legislature are presented for approval.
The numbers are usually big, hundreds of millions of dollars to be invested in long-term projects, some with benefits that are years or decades away.
There is usually little question that voters will approve money for highways, bridges, ports and other bricks-and-mortar infrastructure improvement projects.
That’s the sort of spending people can see and which has nearly immediate impact on their lives.
Just as often, however, the state makes long-range investments in technical schools, higher education and research and development projects.
These have a much longer time line and require a leap of faith that the investment will eventually bear fruit.
Maine’s voters have wisely and generously invested in everything from biomedical, agricultural and marine research projects, to name a few.
One of the biggest investments has been in the Engineered Wood Composites Center at the University of Maine.
Last week’s announcement was more than just good news, it represented hard evidence that the state’s long-term investments in R&D do pay dividends.
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