CEDC Director’s Report
November 2008
As the November election preparations and campaigning wind down we are left to wonder about the state of the economy as we move forward to a new Presidential administration and the New Year. At least energy costs have somewhat abated, for a while.
Business stirrings continue unabated with some influence felt from the state of the national and global economy. It seems every transaction; even those we would think would be fairly routine, are getting more and more complicated by outside forces. We also are seeing refinancing requests by owners with loans with other institutions as their core businesses dry up with other business closings in the region
Take the reuse of the Wausau plant as a for instance. Just when we think we’ve put together a good, collaborative and in-depth strategy to lease a substantial portion of the space for workforce development, manufacturing mall environment, incubator support services for new businesses complete with high-potential funding we encounter an unwillingness (so far) by the new owner to agree to Brownfield assessment underwritten by grant funding.
As you can guess this virtually stalls negotiations both with the non-profit sector and potential private investors. Many of us saw this property as having great potential for restoring employment and jump-starting the diversification of the manufacturing sector for the county.
We are following several strategies and program offerings the owner could access to abate any environmental issue that might be present. Some of these programs even reward with “Brownfield’s tax credits” the owner who undertakes the cleanup. We do not know if there is a “hot environmental” issue or whether the owner simply has no appreciation for the impact his reluctance might cause in resale or leasing of the property.
A soon to be released wood availability study conducted for NH Forest and Lands seems to indicate that there is less low-grade wood available for supplying large, biomass electric plants. This in turn brings into question the need for a $200m transmission upgrade to handle the expected biomass to energy plant output. Secondarily it supports the Coös Economic Action Plan recommendation that smaller, Combined Heating Power (CHP) plants be built to benefit local heat users and power needs. The smaller plants mean less long distance hauling for wood chips to wood-fired boiler operations, much higher efficiencies since more generation products (electricity, steam, heat, hot water) are used and savings from transitioning from imported fuels and costly electricity to locally produced benefits.
Interestingly Vermont Electric Coop is investigating development of 10-15 of these smaller plants in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont near large commercial complexes (ski areas, retail areas in towns and industrial parks) and claim to have found financial support for the projects. That is a model we should replicate as a way of quickly benefiting our communities and logging operators.
The Danish District Heating Board is in Lancaster on the night of Nov. 12th to meet with communities and businesses about their interest in these projects. CEDC is working as a supporting partner of this which will then be followed up Friday with a session in Groveton to try to get that project moving to the next level. (An added session in Berlin Thursday morning will plumb that community’s interest as well) Colebrook continues to express interest and the town of Errol is looking into the idea as well as the Mount Washington Resort.
To be sure some of these operations would be more cost effective with some legislative changes which were one of the key charges of the Coös Economic Action Plan: to coalesce support for legislation that directly benefits Coös Country residents and their economy.
Speaking of the Coös EAP you all should be receiving email updates from North Country Council with links to reports and other valuable information that tells the story behind the headlines. Jeff Hayes and Pat Garvin or North Country Council and I have been submitting items to keep people informed about how the work of the Coös EAP keeps plugging away on the recommendations in support of the 17 action steps. If you have not received these updates please let me know.
It seems unfathomable that we are pushing up against Thanksgiving and Old Man Winter but there’s snow on the ground as I write this. Due to all the year’s complications we are hosting the Annual Meeting on Nov. 20th at the Mountain View and have an interesting line-up of speakers to provide a glimpse of how manufacturing is changing in the county.
Steel Elements, Isaacson Structural Steel, Presby Plastics and Environmental, Brown Street and Vt. Tubbs Furniture and Colebrook Manufacturing as well as the Wireless LINC program will all make short presentations highlighting how their businesses have and continue to grow, introduce new products and deal with the challenges of diversifying the Coös Economy. This should be very enlightening and strengthen the belief that we must and can rebuild the Coös Economy from within.
We also will be nominating four or five new members to the Board of Directors (one nominee remains unconfirmed). See attached action vote list for special Nov. 20th Board mtg at 5 p.m. at Mt View Hotel’s Eisenhower Library.
One downfall of all the activities in the county is almost constant over scheduling where we all could choose between two or three meetings and sessions we’d like to attend. The night of our scheduled Nov. 13th Directors meeting the Northern Forest Center is holding a kick-off release and Symposium of their Sustainable Economic Initiative plan for the four state regions. This caused the resetting of our business meeting (ratifying several action items to just before the annual meeting) as several board members will attend this important session.
The night of our annual meeting we scheduled on top of the Mt Washington Valley Economic Council’s annual meeting, an annual affair the week before Thanksgiving. That is both good and bad.
Locally I am working with an ad-hoc group in Whitefield to address many deferred infrastructure issues (including the fate of their presently condemned town hall/town office complex).
We will advance an ambitious plan at a community meeting on Dec. 3rd to replace the town hall with a new, more useful facility; prioritize a list of downtown upgrades and collaborate with other infrastructure projects and proposed alternative financing to enhance travel and future investments in the downtown area.
Finally, I have submitted a renewal request for County appropriations which will be subject to a public hearing sometime in early December and then voted by the County Delegation in March. I’ll have those narratives available at our next session.
See you all then.
Peter Riviere, Executive Director
Coös Economic Development Corp.
148 Main Street
Lancaster, NH 03584
788-3900 (ph)
631-0217 (cell)
|