Dear Editor:

Back in 2000, Boothbay's Town Manager Carlo Pilgrim gave me an idea: Form an economic development group to help launch promising new business ventures on the Boothbay peninsula.

The new Commissioner of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development, Steve Levesque quickly approved a $10,000 planning grant to help BRED (Boothbay Region Economic Development Corporation) get off the ground.

There was only one problem: From the outset, we were all barking up the wrong tree.

Our great economic growth potential is not in commerce but in specialized education. But it took the spectre of St. Andrews Hospital closing its emergency room to force folks to seriously consider alternatives.

For instance, here's one that is both realistic and doable: Convert St. Andrews into a first-class medical junior college. This could be a year-round teaching hospital with research laboratories, surgical services, nursing school and more. It could all be top notch.

Just think … an outstanding junior college, a campus by the sea. In short, the finest and most beautiful two years of college money can buy.

This whole peninsula sits atop a platinum mine. Just consider what happens when an ordinary town turns itself into a small college town virtually overnight.

Students arrive by the hundreds, high school students and their parents come do a little campus scouting, and new businesses spring up. Professors will be out looking for real estate, college staff will keep our restaurants busy, and Boothbay Harbor will prosper like never before.

I say it's time to switch from confrontation to cooperation in our dealings with Lincoln County Healthcare.

Wouldn't it be something if they already had visions of a medical junior college dancing in their heads?

John VanOrsdell
Boothbay