With an eye toward creating a regional training center for the maritime trades, Maine Maritime Academy has leased the nearly 50,000-square-foot former Wayfair call center at Brunswick Landing.
The Maritime Industrial Workforce Training Center already has welcomed a first cohort from the decades-old Bath Iron Works Apprentice School. In August, nearly 20 students from Region 10 Technical High School will begin a two-year engineering and architectural design program.
The former Navy Exchange building was renovated to become a customer service hub for the online furniture and home goods retailer Wayfair in 2016. Once the largest employer at Brunswick Landing, Wayfair vacated the location in 2023 as part of a pandemic-driven shift to remote work.
Now, Maine Maritime Academy President Craig Johnson, a native of Bailey Island, sees the new training center drawing students from as far away as New York, Maryland and even the Western U.S. The training center moved into the former Wayfair building in September.
Participants in the four-year apprenticeship program — not to be confused with a prehire training program that BIW operates with Southern Maine Community College — are paid by BIW while they receive on-the-job training and attend academic classes such as mechanical drawing, physics and business communications during a regular 40-hour work week.
The program is equivalent to four semesters, or 60 credit hours. Graduates earn an associate’s degree in ship production from Maine Maritime Academy, as well as a certificate of apprenticeship from the state of Maine and a diploma from the BIW Apprentice School.
Currently the space is configured for classroom training, but as equipment arrives, it will be outfitted to replicate welding, shipfitting, pipefitting and other trades at the Bath shipyard, allowing workers to train in a true-to-life environment, said Heather Hopkins, Maine Maritime Academy’s director of maritime operations and industrial training.
A $2.7 million federal grant is partially funding that equipment, Johnson said.
While Bath Iron Works is the school’s primary partner at the training center, Hopkins said Maine Maritime would welcome additional partners from the public and private sectors.
Maine Maritime hopes to move to Brunswick a “very successful” training program for the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard held on its campus in Castine last summer, Johnson said, and to introduce a business program at Brunswick Landing that could draw students from Portland and the Midcoast.
“I think it’s going to be a very regional training center,” he said. “But just between BIW and Portsmouth (Naval Shipyard), the training needs are enough to keep any building moving.”
Johnson said a nationwide shortage of shipyard workers and a renewed emphasis on funding shipbuilding and submarine repair, along with hiring pressures from private shipyards throughout the state, means trained workers will be needed for the foreseeable future.
BIW hired 680 people in 2024 and has added 260 so far in 2025, spokesperson David Hench said.
“The Apprenticeship Program has a demonstrated, decades-long track record of producing skilled employees who become future leaders in the shipyard,” Ray Steen, vice president of human resources at BIW, said in a statement. “They are well-respected by their peers for the commitment they have made in the program. This investment in education pays significant dividends for the company, the state and the U.S. Navy. For the individual, graduation opens up many career paths, as they become leaders of their trade or in various roles across the shipyard.”
Also partnering with Maine Maritime Academy in the new Maritime Industrial Workforce Training Center is Region 10 Technical High School, which will hold its engineering and architectural design program in the space beginning this fall.
The 50-year-old vocational school in Brunswick serves students from the Brunswick School Department; Maine School Administrative District 75, which includes Topsham, Harpswell, Bowdoin and Bowdoinham; and Regional School Unit 5, which includes Freeport, Durham and Pownal.
The school had run out of space to add programming, Region 10 Superintendent Shawn Chabot said.
High school students in the first year of the two-year program will earn college credit from Maine Maritime Academy that will be transferable to other colleges.
Chabot said the new engineering and architectural design program is relevant to shipbuilding and BIW, and it makes sense in the new Maritime Industrial Workforce Training Center.
“This would be one of the core components that BIW is looking for, as well for individuals going into that field,” he said. “Obviously they’re looking for more (training) but … it’s an introduction in high school to see if it’s something they would be interested in, whether at BIW itself or in another postsecondary certificate program.”
Chabot said Maine Maritime assisted with the infrastructure and equipment, and has otherwise “gone above and beyond in support of us starting the program.” Region 10 is “really excited” to be partnering with the academy, he added.
“If it goes well, and I anticipate it will, we will look at expanding our offerings and either start additional new classes or maybe move existing programs over there to take advantage of just the sheer space,” Chabot said.
Johnson called the Region 10 students “extremely valuable.”
“In my mind, we will have the college part of what we do there, and Region 10 has a growth platform there,” he said. “We can share classrooms, and they can get the stuff that Maine Maritime teaches that nobody else teaches.”
Johnson said the BIW apprenticeship program offers a great opportunity for participants to further their education while working and earning money.
“To me, it’s a no-brainer for someone interested in a maritime education and career — they go hand in hand,” he said. “The folks who have been through the program have been very successful.”
