CEDC Director’s Report
October 2008
The information contained in this report may be dated by the time we meet in early October as the national economy’s ups and downs is already causing some development difficulties and investor reluctance.
You all have seen and analyzed the offering to Steel Elements. Hopefully we can bring that to a vote on October 8th.
We also will brief you on the annual meeting plans. As of today I am trying to schedule it for the regular Thursday night meeting date so it likely would be November 20th if the Mountain View at a cost of $10 per head and a cash bar. I have in mind inviting three business investors: The Tagers’ of Brown Street Furniture; David Presby of Presby Environmental and Scott Coulombe of Steel Elements to talk about the region and their reasons for investing/expanding. We can add others (perhaps Mt. Wash resort and NC Manufacturing in Colebrook) to share 5 minutes about those choices and how they’ve fared. We really want to paint a picture of how the county’s turned around. This would help change the story line which still prevails about the North Country being in the dumper.
The larger discussion I think centers on future uses of the Wausau plant. Peter Powell, Jeff Hayes, Cathy Conway and I (along with others) met with the new owner Bill Firestone on September 18th for a reasonably casual get to know you.
I think it’s fair to say he does not typically work with non-profits and was more accustomed to cash transactions instead of soft agreements which are what we were proposing. Hard and fast answers were short in coming so we still only have a general idea of how much he values lease space, how much space he would consider leasing, if the power and steam generation machinery was already sold (I understand it is) and if he is entertaining offers from possible equity partners and what business those partners represent.
Firestone did say if there was an asset that we saw some reuse value from he would leave it in place (even the generation capacity) but, as I said, he’d like to see the cash. “Money talks and BS walks,” I believe I heard him say more than once.
What several of us have sketched out is a lease offering for as much as 200,000 square feet (most of the conversion and warehouse space that is clean and ready for renovation to other uses) using EDA set asides in the Coös Sudden and Severe 2 grant being administered by North Country Council’s Jeff Hayes.
Under this proposal we would access the Sudden & Severe funds to make leasehold improvements (perhaps building partitions to secure one company from another, move electric service, construct rest rooms, etc.); market and recruit businesses and manage the space. A buy-back agreement would have to be included should Firestone sell off the property severing our lease agreement. This would answer EDAs prohibition that private business not benefit from the expenditure of public money.
The key problem with this scenario is the impact the Wall Street troubles are having on business investment and expansion right now. We are seeing some evidence of this already and it could cripple these initiatives to sign businesses sooner rather than later to take over space and begin operations in a repurposed Wausau plant. Part of this plan includes an incubator operated by numerous non-profits.
A second proposal will be discussed with the Groveton Selectboard Monday night and that is gaining public access to the huge (8million gallons per day) Wausau/Groveton Paper Board waste water treatment plant. Groveton has some interest in acquiring some capacity but has neither the staffing nor the funds to acquire and operate such a huge facility. Additionally they stand to lose $60,000 in tax revenues by seeing it off the private industry tax rolls.
Again, EDA reuse funds could assist in a capacity and cost assessment for the town as well as engineering work to determine the cost of downsizing the plant.
We’ll have more of this more definitively on the 8th of October.
I am also exploring application for Intermediary Relending Program funds from USDA after discussions with Jon Freeman. That will be part of our agenda for discussion.
Another partnership discussion focuses on potential mergers between numerous agencies with a possible conversation by the agency staffs preparatory to coming up with a plan that would streamline operations, strengthen advocacy and be an efficiency plan to bolster the region’s economy. These discussions are not new tough they’ve always been held at kind of a hypothetical level.
Warmest regards. See you all on Weds. the 8th of October here in Lancaster
Peter Riviere
CEDC
788-3900 office
631-0217 cell
788-3355 fax
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