BRATTLEBORO – In most ways, the celebrations held Monday at two Brattleboro businesses didn’t have much in common.
But there was one key driver behind a groundbreaking at G.S. Precision Inc. and a ribbon-cutting for The Ironwood Brands: The Windham County Economic Development Program, funded by a state settlement with Vermont Yankee owner Entergy, pumped a combined $2.2 million into the projects.
Those who run the program say that, after a slow start, they’ve revamped and refocused the program so that it is bearing fruit in the form of new jobs in a county that is reeling economically from the shutdown of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon.
“There is no other county in the state of Vermont that has cash at its disposal to pass out – to make loans and sometimes to make grants – to grow jobs,” Gov. Peter Shumlin said at the Ironwood event off Old Ferry Road. “So it does give us an advantage.”
Vermont’s 2013 settlement with Entergy came after the company announced its plans to cease producing power at the Vernon nuclear plant at the end of 2014. With hundreds of jobs and millions in tax revenue leaving the county, Entergy agreed to cushion the blow by providing cash for taxes, clean energy investments and economic development.
The latter category is the largest: Entergy is paying $2 million annually for five years to support economic development here.
“The whole intent when I sat down with Entergy and it was clear that they were moving on – I said, ‘Listen, we’ve got to find a way to fund other jobs in Windham County,’” Shumlin recalled during his Monday visit to Brattleboro.
The Windham County Economic Development Program manages the Entergy cash and sought the first round of applications for grants and loans in 2014. But the distribution of funds didn’t go as planned initially. Shumlin awarded less than half the available $2 million because, he said at the time, “most of the proposals didn’t offer the sort of transformational new jobs and economic opportunity we were hoping for.”
One of the program’s initial commitments was a $200,000 loan to green building companies run by Eli Gould in Brattleboro – Ironwood Brand LLC, PreCraft and STIX L3C. Gould pieced together additional funding and has purchased the former J.J. Nissen Bakery Outlet building in town.
While Gould plans to maintain his shop on Abbott Road in West Brattleboro, the new space will allow him to grow.
“We hope, if we can pull this off, that five years from now we’re here in a space that can be hosting training, advanced practice and showroom displays of the sort of things we’re going to be manufacturing out in back,” Gould said.
The project also fits easily into the Windham Region’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy.
Adam Grinold, executive director of Brattleboro Development Credit Corp., said the strategy identifies green building as “a top prospect to replace Entergy jobs with new manufacturing careers in high-performance prefab and value-added timber and engineering.”
Grinold said the group sees Gould’s companies “as part of the region’s future success.”
Pat Moulton, secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, said the program shows that the state “can move at the pace of business.”
That was true on a much larger scale with G.S. Precision, an anchor tenant at Exit One Industrial Park. The Brattleboro-headquartered maker of machined components serves customers such as the aircraft, medical and automotive industries and employs about 300, but officials earlier this year got word that Chief Executive Officer Norm Schneeberger was considering moving his business to New Hampshire as part of an expansion plan.
A team of federal, state and local officials reacted quickly to prevent that from happening. The big question during a meeting at G.S. Precision, Shumlin recalled, was, “what can we we do to make sure that Vermont – Windham County – is the most competitive place for you to grow jobs?”
Schneeberger said he was initially skeptical. Normally, he said, “I don’t view government intervention as something that’s conducive to running a successful business – no offense.”
But Shumlin, U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., put together an offer Schneeberger couldn’t refuse, and Monday’s gathering served as a ceremonial groundbreaking for a $17 million G.S. Precision expansion that could create 100 additional jobs here.
The governmental financing package to support the company’s growth includes $1 million in federal Community Development Block Grant funds; a $1.5 million loan from the Vermont Economic Development Authority; $1 million in Vermont Employment Growth Incentives; $6 million in federal New Market Market Tax Credits; and a $200,000 loan, along with tax breaks, from the town of Brattleboro.
Another key piece of the package was a $2 million loan from the Windham County Economic Development Program.
In response to criticisms that the program may have been top heavy, there’s more regional and local input in funding decisions. That’s mainly via a Windham County Advisory Council that reviews potential projects and provides input to the state.
Also, the program now has a project manager, R.T. Brown, based at Brattleboro Development Credit Corp. Brown said his job is to “assist businesses as they navigate the process and to explore available options within the program.”
The idea is that both businesses and nonprofits need to have a better idea of the possibilities and the limitations of Windham County’s development money. For example, there were just two grant applications submitted by a Dec. 21 deadline, reflecting the fact that there is a much more structured process for requesting and reviewing grant proposals, Brown said.
And, while there have been more grants than loans handed out at this point, Brown said, “we will see other loan applications coming through now.”
Loans are important, because they’ll assure that the Entergy money lasts beyond the company’s five years of required payments to the state. In reference to Gould’s $200,000 allocation, Shumlin said “that money will be paid back and give the next generation of entrepreneurs who have a bright idea the ability to grow future jobs in Windham County.”
Gould said he’s been working toward expansion for a long time, but he’s not sure he would have bought his new building this year if not for the Windham County Economic Development Program. “This is a program that helped a business take a risk,” he said. “It’s not a handout.”
More information on the Windham County Economic Development Program, including guidelines for applying, is available at http://accd.vermont.gov/business/WCGP.
