2/100 KTs: Calais + St Croix Valley

Daily Knowledge Town 2/100

Calais, Maine

The Border Is the Asset

From Main Street in Calais, another country is not somewhere beyond the horizon. It is directly across the water.

The brick buildings of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, face Calais from the opposite bank of the St. Croix River. Three international crossings connect the communities. In May 2026 alone, more than 61,000 people entered Calais from New Brunswick, alongside approximately 4,700 trucks. Sunrise County Economic Council⁠

Calais is often described as remote. That is only partly true.

Calais is not simply at the edge of Maine. It sits at the seam between Maine, Atlantic Canada, the working forests of Washington County and the wider North Atlantic economy.

The border is not Calais’s disadvantage.

It may be its most distinctive asset.

A college large enough to change the city

Washington County Community College should be the operating institution for this Knowledge Town.

WCCC currently enrolls 805 students and provides campus housing in a city of 3,123 people. It offers more than 30 areas of study, including welding, heavy equipment, HVAC, medical assisting, human services, outdoor leadership and technical occupations. Maine Community College System⁠ WCCC programs⁠

Those numbers make WCCC much more than a college located in Calais. Relative to the size of the city, it is one of the largest civic, educational and workforce institutions in the community.

President Susan Mingo also embodies the local character of the institution. She was raised in Washington County, has led WCCC since 2018 and owns two small businesses in the Calais area. In May 2026, the University of Maine at Machias awarded her an honorary doctorate recognizing her commitment to education and regional opportunity. Susan Mingo⁠ WCCC recognition⁠

A small event in August revealed what this institutional role can mean.

When the closure of a nearby childcare center suddenly threatened families, students and employers, WCCC and Community Action moved to expand childcare capacity in Calais. Mingo described childcare not as a peripheral social service, but as infrastructure supporting education, families and the workforce. WCCC childcare response, August 2, 2026⁠

That is the instinct of a Knowledge Town institution: when the place faces a barrier, the college helps organize the response.

The opportunity is to turn that instinct into a permanent operating system.

The wider system is surprisingly complete

Calais Community Hospital provides emergency, surgical, diagnostic, rehabilitation and family-medicine services across Washington County. Under President and CEO Steve Lail, the hospital has also introduced robotically assisted knee surgery, an unusual capability for a rural critical-access setting. Calais Community Hospital⁠ Hospital leadership⁠ Robotic surgery⁠

The hospital gives WCCC a real-world partner for medical assisting, human services, rural health, aging and workforce development.

Calais also possesses infrastructure that many larger rural communities are still trying to build.

Downeast Broadband Utility is Maine’s first and only municipal internet broadband utility. Owned by Calais, Baileyville, Alexander, Princeton and Cooper, it provides publicly owned fiber infrastructure over which multiple service providers can operate. Downeast Broadband Utility⁠

This is not simply faster internet. It is locally controlled knowledge infrastructure.

Upstream in Baileyville, Woodland Pulp employs approximately 310 people and describes itself as Washington County’s largest employer. Its affiliate, St. Croix Tissue, converts part of the mill’s output into tissue products. Across the river, Ganong operates its confectionery manufacturing business in St. Stephen, where the company was founded in 1873. Woodland Pulp⁠ Ganong⁠

These businesses create practical challenges around industrial maintenance, energy, automation, logistics, export markets and workforce succession. WCCC already teaches many of the relevant skills.

The Knowledge Town opportunity is not to replace the region’s traditional industries with a speculative technology economy. It is to apply new knowledge, people and tools to industries that already support the community.

A place with a deeper history

The St. Croix Valley cannot be understood solely as an American-Canadian border economy.

The National Park Service recognizes Saint Croix Island as part of the ancestral, unceded homeland of the Passamaquoddy. The Passamaquoddy have cared for this landscape for thousands of years and remain a sovereign people with communities at Sipayik and Motahkomikuk. National Park Service⁠

That history should not become decorative branding for a development strategy.

Any serious Knowledge Town initiative should invite Passamaquoddy participation as sovereign partners, on terms determined together. Indigenous knowledge, language, stewardship and entrepreneurship should be treated as living capabilities, not historical artifacts.

Calais also has a riverfront, historic commercial buildings, a public library, parks and an active downtown improvement program. These are the beginnings of a place where learning, commerce and civic life can meet. City of Calais⁠ Downtown business assistance⁠

The unresolved tension

The ingredients exist, but they do not yet function as one system.

WCCC trains people. The hospital needs workers. Woodland Pulp and other employers require technical skills. The region owns fiber. Calais and St. Stephen share customers, history and labor. Sunrise County Economic Council supports entrepreneurship, housing and economic development.

Yet responsibility remains divided among institutions, municipalities, two states or provinces and two national governments.

The border amplifies both the opportunity and the risk.

May 2026 crossings into Calais increased 23 percent from May 2025, but remained more than 20 percent below May 2024. Local retail activity, hospitality and services remain exposed to decisions made far outside Washington County. Border analysis⁠

Housing is another constraint. Sunrise County Economic Council reported in April 2026 that Washington County was experiencing its sharpest housing pressures in decades, with prices outpacing wages and construction failing to meet demand. Washington County Housing Summit⁠

A student can obtain a valuable credential at WCCC and still struggle to find a suitable home, a clear career pathway or a reason to remain in the valley.

My inference is that Calais does not primarily suffer from a lack of assets.

It suffers from a lack of organized scale.

Create the St. Croix Knowledge Town Compact

Calais should establish a small delivery compact rather than another general economic-development committee.

Natural conveners include WCCC President Susan Mingo, Mayor Marcia Rogers, City Manager Michael Ellis, hospital CEO Steve Lail and Sunrise County Economic Council Executive Director Charles Rudelitch. They should invite the Passamaquoddy Tribe, St. Stephen, employers, schools, housing organizations and Downeast Broadband Utility to help shape the structure.

The compact should deliver five things.

1. Establish a Border Lab at WCCC

The Border Lab would organize applied projects around three missions:

• Rural health, aging and care delivery

• Advanced forest products, industrial maintenance and energy

• Cross-border trade, logistics and small-business growth

Employers and public agencies would bring real problems. WCCC students and faculty would work on them through paid projects, apprenticeships and short-term programs.

The objective would not be research for its own sake. It would be better operations, new credentials, retained workers and locally created enterprises.

2. Build the valley’s talent graph

The partners should track where students come from, which programs they complete, where graduates work, which positions remain vacant and why people leave.

Every WCCC student should be able to see a regional pathway from education to paid work, housing and further learning.

Woodland Pulp, Calais Community Hospital, local governments and smaller employers should collectively publish their anticipated skills needs rather than recruit separately after vacancies appear.

3. Create a rural-health workforce platform

WCCC and Calais Community Hospital should connect medical assisting, human services, childcare, behavioral health, home care and continuing education into one workforce system.

Municipal fiber creates the opportunity to support telehealth, remote specialist access and care at home. The hospital supplies the care environment. WCCC supplies education. Community organizations understand the barriers confronting families.

Childcare should be treated as part of this platform, not as an unrelated program.

4. Turn downtown buildings into the housing ladder

Calais needs a visible pipeline of attainable homes for students, hospital employees, industrial workers, families and older residents.

That should include upper-floor downtown conversions, rehabilitation of existing homes, small infill buildings, student-to-worker housing and accessible homes for people seeking to remain in the community as they age.

The first task is a building-level inventory: ownership, vacancy, condition, rehabilitation cost and realistic financing.

A housing target without sites and economics will remain an aspiration.

5. Connect the valley physically and institutionally

Downtown, the riverfront, WCCC, the hospital and employment areas should be linked by a recognizable mobility and public-realm network.

The international bridge should become the symbolic center of the proposition. Calais and St. Stephen are not suburbs of one another, but they are two halves of a distinctive cross-border place.

The relationship will always involve customs, currencies and different legal systems. The goal is not to pretend the border does not exist. It is to make legitimate cross-border learning, commerce and civic exchange easier to navigate.

A rural model with wider significance

Calais will not become a smaller version of Boston, Portland or Burlington.

That is not the objective.

It could become something more original: a rural, cross-border Knowledge Town where a community college serves as the integrator of education, healthcare, industry, broadband, housing and place.

The model would begin with institutions already doing the work:

WCCC providing accessible education.

Calais Community Hospital sustaining rural healthcare.

Downeast Broadband Utility supplying public digital infrastructure.

Woodland Pulp and Ganong maintaining productive industry.

Sunrise County Economic Council organizing regional action.

Calais and St. Stephen sustaining a shared valley.

The pieces are present.

The next move is to connect them across the river, across institutions and across the transition from learning to a life in the St. Croix Valley.

The border is not the end of the place.

It is the beginning of the model.