Anna O’Keefe, DMD, PA Breaks Ground at FirstPark

OAKLAND, Maine – FirstPark welcomed the arrival of Dr. O’Keefe to 93 FirstPark Drive on Friday with a groundbreaking ceremony. The new state-of-the-art dental facility is being built by Ouellet Construction. The 5,200 square-foot building doubles the size of the Anna O’Keefe’s current location in Waterville. The new facility will include new X-ray equipment and the latest air quality technology, designed to help protect patients and staff from airborne viruses, like COVID-19. The building is scheduled to open this fall.

“Our goal is to provide the best dentistry and the best service to each patient. We have outgrown our current location in Waterville, so when the opportunity came up to build a state-of-the-art facility for our staff and patients inside FirstPark, we jumped at the chance. FirstPark was great to work with and had the perfect pre-permitted site that will be a great location for us. We were able to design and build our own facility that will be easy to access off I-95. We know relocating to FirstPark will help us provide better more modern care to our patients and start accepting new patients again,” said Brendan O’Keefe, business manager for Anna O’Keefe.

Anna O’Keefe and Brendan O’Keefe graduated from Colby College and the couple, along with Dr. John Poirier, plan to use the new facility to grow the business and create more jobs. By September, the O’Keefe’s plan to hire more staff, including another doctor, additional front office staff and a hygienist.

Ouellet Construction will be using the newest HVAC equipment available that will allow additional air changes per hour in the building and the best filtration on any recirculated air. Anna O’Keefe has also worked with Design Ergonomics, A.E. Hodsdon Engineering and Androscoggin Bank to create the plans and financing for the new facility.

The property is the first new construction inside the park in 2021. In 2020, the park experienced the most commercial real estate sales since the business park opened in 1999.

“Coming out of the pandemic, we have seen a lot of interest from businesses in Maine and across the country. We continue to see more interest in the park because of our location and easy and fast approval process. Each time a new business locates to FirstPark, it also benefits the 24 communities by creating revenue for those cities and towns to use and invest back into their communities,” said Jim Dinkle, executive director of FirstPark.

In 2020, FirstPark made the final bond payment to the Maine Municipal Bond Bank for the development of the business park in 1999. The historic payment marked the end of the 20-year loan initiated when 24 Maine municipalities collaborated on building the park as a future source of tax revenue.

The addition of O’Keefe to FirstPark adds to the revenue for the business park, which is allocated to the communities that support FirstPark. The cities and towns include: Anson, Benton, Canaan, China, Clinton, Cornville, Fairfield, Farmingdale, Gardiner, Hartland, Manchester, Norridgewock, Oakland, Palmyra, Pittsfield, Readfield, Rome, Sidney, Smithfield, Solon, Starks, St. Albans, Waterville and Winslow.

In 2021, the park is expected to make more investments, including road construction, additional energy options and potential residential living options within the large 285-acre campus.

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About FirstPark:
FirstPark (www.firstpark.com) is a 285‐acre business park community in Oakland, Maine.
Managed by Kennebec Regional Development Authority and supported by more than 20
surrounding communities, the business park is in the central part of the state along the I‐95 corridor between Portland, Boston and New York to the south and Quebec City to the north. FirstPark is home to 16 businesses including anchor tenant T‐Mobile, a call center that employs more than 800 people. Available sites range in size from five to 24 acres, and the business park is in a Foreign Trade Zone.