Mills closed, New Hampshire city seeks new options

BERLIN, N.H. — Daughter of a lumberjack, Sylvia Poulin has spent most of her 60 years in this far-northern New Hampshire city, growing up in what now seem like the good old days and more recently sharing in its setbacks.

Were there times when she and her husband considered moving somewhere more prosperous and less remote? “Absolutely,” she replies.

Yet something about Berlin — its family ties, its rough-hewn modesty — anchored her. And here she is now, striding along once-booming, now-struggling Main Street, brimming with dreams and schemes to revive it.

The city’s forebears might roll their eyes at some of the plans, such as mud-race festivals at an off-road-vehicle park. But in Berlin, as in other out-of-the-way towns across America that have faded with economic shifts, determined civic leaders are ready to try almost anything.

For decades, including much of Poulin’s youth, life in Berlin involved a trade-off: Its giant pulp mill provided abundant jobs but also polluted its river with noxious-smelling chemicals.

The rotten-egg smell is gone now, but so are the mill jobs. Poulin and her colleagues are scrambling to sustain community spirit and conjure up new economic options in the face of relentless bad breaks.

A 1,280-inmate capacity federal prison completed last year has yet to open due to lack of operating funds from Congress. The largest manufacturer, a steel company, has filed for bankruptcy protection, and the lone movie theater just closed. School enrollment on opening day was down 17 percent from five years ago.

A fresh dose of bad news seems to come “almost every week,” says Patrick MacQueen, the city manager. Still, refusing to sound gloomy, he adds, “The resilience of the people here is pretty amazing.”

Berlin — pronounced to rhyme with Merlin, King Arthur’s mentor — is blessed by a majestic setting, with the Androscoggin River running through its midst and the Presidential Range of the White Mountains in view to the south. But its population of about 10,050 is half of its peak in 1930, when it was New Hampshire’s fourth biggest city. A quarter of its residents are over 65; its rates of poverty and joblessness are among the state’s highest.

Over most of the 20th century, Berlin’s predominantly French-Canadian populace provided a loyal workforce for the Brown Co., which in boom times employed thousands of woodcutters and mill workers while thriving as a global supplier of paper products.

Nicknamed “The City That Trees Built,” Berlin in its heyday had a trolley system, a symphony orchestra and one of the largest ski jumps in the East. The mill complex eventually passed through a series of other owners before operations ceased in 2006.

“People made a good living from the mill, and then it closed and it was like, `What do we do now?”’ said Poulin, a former jewelry store owner who heads an initiative to revitalize Main Street.

She’s proud of a new restaurant and bookstore/cafe/gift shop, and hopes to woo a bakery and microbrewery. For now, though, the crowds that flock to a weekly farmers’ market aren’t easily replicated at other times.

Along Main Street’s three core blocks, eight buildings — most with multiple storefronts — are vacant, awaiting renovation or demolition. At midday on a recent weekday, roughly half the street’s free parking spots were empty.

It’s a stark contrast with North Conway, 35 miles to the south, a town close to all-season mountain resorts and teeming with outlet stores that often draw bumper-to-bumper traffic.

“Berlin has not typically looked at itself as a tourism destination,” said city planner Pamela Laflamme. “We have to come up with strategies to pull people further north.”

Indeed, Berlin lies north of virtually all the state’s major attractions, with little beyond it except hamlets and wilderness. The nearest interstate is nearly an hour’s drive to the southwest; the airport in Portland, Maine, is 100 miles away. While certainly a challenge, its location may also represent opportunity, some locals say.

Joan Chamberlain, director of the St. Keiran performing arts center, moved here in 1995 from southern New Hampshire — where she shared the common image of Berlin as distant and odorous.

Now she’s a booster who believes Berlin can entice certain types of visitors from afar — those interested in backwoods recreation, local history and a forest heritage park that celebrates the logging industry.

“The goal is to be a dot on the New Hampshire attractions map,” she said. “I just wish we’d get a break.”

One of the best hopes for luring visitors is Jericho Mountain, a new state park on Berlin’s outskirts offering a vast network of trails for all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles. Poulin said some of its ATV festivals have drawn more than 2,000 people from across New England, and she hopes the park’s popularity might soon end Berlin’s long stretch without a quality motel or hotel.

The federal prison, if and when it opens, would likely provide a major boost, employing more than 300 people and contributing $40 million annually to the area’s economy. Civic leaders believe its youthful work force (correctional officers must be under 37 when hired) would revive Berlin via an influx of families with school-age children.

Another beacon of hope is a planned $275 million biomass power plant on the site of the old pulp mill. The project is expected to create more than 300 construction jobs and 40 permanent jobs.

“We keep trying to reinvent ourselves,” Poulin said. “We had all our eggs in one basket with the mill, and we’re learning we had to diversify...”

Poulin, who extols Berlin’s low-key, family-oriented ambiance, recognizes that not all her neighbors share her zeal.

“I’ve burned out a lot of volunteers, but you find new ones,” she said. “There are always cynics. If you can’t bring them along, you leave them behind.”

Patti Stolte, director of elder programs for a regional social service nonprofit, says some of the tourism proposals she’s heard seem unrealistic, given Berlin’s no-frills way of life, but she’s glad that civic leaders are thinking creatively.

“It’s pie in the sky, but I really applaud them,” she said. “I have high hopes — but I have worries too.”

There’s plenty to worry about: a surge of foreclosures, an exodus of young adults, domestic violence incidents that have kept the battered women’s shelter busier than usual this year.

One nagging headache is the glut of substandard housing, a vestige of the era when Berlin had twice as many residents. The city has demolished dozens of abandoned buildings, trying to eliminate the blight that keeps property values at about half the statewide average.

In some cases, the homes burned or fell apart, and owners walked away with their insurance money instead of spending it to fix a house that might be worth only $20,000.

Meanwhile, Berlin’s low rents — $600 a month is typical for a 2-bedroom apartment — have attracted poor people priced out of more affluent New Hampshire towns.

“For all of Berlin’s problems, it gets everybody else’s problems also,” said MacQueen.

But he insists the city will persevere.

“You give us half of what other places have, and we’ll do fine.”