FREEPORT – Keith McBride is in a good position.

As the new executive director of the Freeport Economic Development Corp., McBride, 34, has the job of attracting businesses to a town that already has a vibrant base in the downtown retail core.

“Freeport is both a small town and a critical hub of business activity in the state of Maine,” he said. “That makes it a very exciting place to do economic development.”

McBride, who was an economic development assistant for the city of Auburn and also worked in the Westbrook economic development department before coming to Freeport, has been on the job since Oct. 1. He replaces outgoing Executive Director Sande Updegraph, who is retiring after six years at the post. The nonprofit organization provides support and assistance to businesses looking to establish or expand in Freeport.

Right now, McBride is working on getting up to speed in town, and he has the assistance of Updegraph, who will be staying on to aid in the transition until Nov. 15. Updegraph said she feels McBride is settling into his new job well.

“I think (it’s going) very smoothly,” Updegraph said. “He’s been very easy to work with. We have a nice platform (at the FEDC) and he’s ready to take off.”

Updegraph added that McBride doesn’t have much of a learning curve.

“He doesn’t need very much (help),” she said. “It’s just introducing him around and that kind of thing.”

Wendy Caisse, the vice president of the Freeport Economic Development Corp. board of directors, was on the recruitment team that interviewed McBride, and said he was a solid choice for the organization.

“Keith really was a standout candidate for us because he has so much energy,” Caisse said. “He’s just brilliant.”

Caisse said McBride is a very likable person, which she felt was important in an executive director, because that person has to deal with everyone from large businesses looking to come to Freeport to the individuals with little experience who want to open up a small business.

“The guy is just someone you want to be around,” Caisse said. “That was a part of the decision process (to hire him).”

On his first days on the job, McBride said, he is getting up to speed on some of the organization’s projects, the most immediate of which is Vision 2025.

Vision 2025 is intended to work in concert with the town’s comprehensive plan, which was passed in 2011. While the comprehensive plan provides some guidance on the direction of the town’s future, the intent of Vision 2025 is to use that guidance to come up with tangible goals. Work on Vision 2025 began in September 2011 and continued this year, including an August meeting where some 40 people took on issues, including commercial development along the Route 1 south corridor and promoting Freeport as “an international outdoor recreation destination,” during round-table discussions. McBride said the final Vision 2025 study would be aired at a public meeting sometime in November.

Looking at the broader picture for the town, McBride said, Freeport has the enviable position of being an attractive destination for new businesses.

“There’s no shortage of new businesses that want to come to town,” he said.

And having such a large and established retail base makes Freeport rise above other area towns, McBride said.

“That makes it incredibly unique,” he said. “It’s a huge competitive advantage that the critical mass (of business) is already here. It’s a great way to market to any size retail business.”

But there are some challenges, as well.

Unlike a community as large as Auburn, which has large areas of land that have the potential for development, Freeport has a much smaller development footprint.

“Here in Freeport, you have a much smaller land area and a much smaller land area that has been set aside for future development,” he said. “So you pick and choose your spots in Freeport to target for future growth.

“I would say it’s my job to take a look at each opportunity and present the pros and cons of it,” McBride continued. “You only really get to develop a piece of property once and if you put something on there that doesn’t really fit in, then it’s there forever. It’s harder to tear something down then build it from scratch. The idea is to take a look at (a proposal) and ask, ‘Is this the best that we’ve got, is this what we really want?’ And there is a delicate balance there.”

So in McBride’s mind, in some ways the mission of the Freeport Economic Development Corp. is not as much attracting as many businesses to town as possible, but rather making sure the businesses that do come to town are the best fit for Freeport.

“I think that’s the attitude that you have to take,” McBride said. “It’s got be strategic, it’s got to be planned, it’s got to be the right opportunity, the beneficial one.”

Keith McBride has taken over as the executive director of the Freeport Economic Development Corp. The town, he said, is a “very exciting place to do economic development.”
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