Former Rockland Call Center Could Be Turned Into Research Institute

MAINE – An ambitious project could be getting started in Rockland. The Free Press newspaper reports that investment banker Matthew Simmons is planning to buy the former MBNA call center building on the Rockland waterfront and turn it into a new international water energy research center.

The newspaper report says Simmons and two partners, also with local ties, are hoping to close on the purchase by the end of the month. Simmons first talked publicly about the water energy idea last summer, in an interview with NEWS CENTER’s Don Carrigan.

“What I’ve started is getting interested parties to get interested, hopefully, in Rockland, to create an institute in Rockland, an institute of water, and allowing 200 to 300 of the best scientists in the world, backed by maybe 20 universities, and 20 corporations and 20 think tanks, come here as a water fellow, and under one roof get all these people doing wave energy and tidal energy and desalination and so forth,” said Simmons.

WCSH