2003: Conflict and Change ; Maine's Employment and Price Levels Remained Stable Last Year, but Its Economy Experienced Plenty of Turmoil.

Summary

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On the surface, 2003 was a quiet year in Maine business, with barely perceptible changes in the big numbers: Private employment across the economy barely moved, falling by 0.1 percent, and prices hardly changed as the inflation rate fell below 2 percent.

Underneath, though, the economy churned with turmoil, conflict and change.

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Extract

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2003: Conflict and Change ; Maine's Employment and Price Levels Remained Stable Last Year, but Its Economy Experienced Plenty of Turmoil.

Las Vegas developers, a biotechnology giant from the Midwest, Irish entrepreneurs, multinational energy distributors, Brazilian oil executives and a trillion-dollar bank based in North Carolina burst onto the Maine scene. Some of the oldest names in Maine business said goodbye, including Great Northern Paper Co., G.H. Bass and the Portland location of Levinsky's.

Meanwhile, employers, workers and voters argued about tax policy and whether the gambling industry has a future in Maine. Lawsuits threatened some of the biggest names in Maine business. Manufacturing plants and billion-dollar retailers laid off workers, even as they looked for new markets.

What follows is a summary of 15 top Maine business stories from 2003 and a list of also-rans.

Sanford casino defeated

Two Maine tribes and a Las Vegas developer asked voters for permission to build a casino resort in Sanford. That referendum failed, but voters approved slot machines for existing harness- racing operations. This approval, in turn, set off a scramble to find a location in southern Maine that would accept a racino.

Maine voters overwhelmingly rejected a referendum question in November which would have allowed the Penobscot Nation and the Passamaquoddy Tribe to build a casino in Maine.

The resort casino would have been devel...

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