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V O L . X X I N O. X X V I I N OV E M B E R 3 0 , 2 0 1 5 30 B A N K I N G & F I N A N C E F O C U S hoping it will get extended. And it would be wonderful if it's made permanent." On the state level, Spies says leg- islation doubling the aggregate cap for the state New Markets program from $250 million to $500 million wouldn't be introduced until 2017 at the earliest, since the second session of the 127 th Legislature that begins in January is intended to deal only with the most urgent pieces of legislation. "Once it's consumed, it's con- sumed," he says of the $250 million cap on state New Markets alloca- tions. "We've used roughly $31 million of our allocation, so we have roughly $10 million left. We hope someday this program will expand … You can use it as a standalone fi nancing tool on some projects, or you can twin it with the federal program and increase the amount of support that goes into the project, which allows you to do projects that otherwise would be even harder to accomplish." Helping 'shallow economies' Spies started out in forestry, worked in the woods awhile and then joined an environmental consulting company. He got his MBA by going to school a night, went to work for a bank and then became a natural resources lender for the Finance Authority of Maine, where he eventually became its executive director. He joined CEI Capital Management in 2006. ose experiences, he says, helped shape his understanding of the chal- lenges small rural states like Maine face as they struggle to build upon many dis- parate "shallow economies": Whether it's a paper mill charting a new course to survive in the face of global com- petition, a fi shing town whose fl eets disappeared with the declining shoals of off shore herring, or a Navy town losing its air base and with it 6,000 jobs, he says the common denominator when a local economy depends chiefl y on one major employer is its vulnerability when things begin to go south. "At FAME, you do a lot of diff er- ent things and you can't help but be aware of the changing rural economies and how when one piece of that starts to deteriorate everyone is aff ected," he says. "It's not a deep pool. e supply chain is tied to that primary employer and when that employer is struggling, the pieces of the puzzle start to come apart. We see that in the high unem- ployment rates of those areas where mills have shut down; an obvious example is the paper industry." ere is a distinct advantage to Maine that CEI Capital Management is a national player in the federal New Markets program, he says. "We decided to expand and seek a national license because we thought it will help us be more competitive in this very competitive fi eld," he says. "On balance, we felt it should help us bring more allocations to Maine, because we'll be able to qualify for larger awards overall. It also helps us diversify risk." Spies says there's probably no better example than the Mölnlycke Health Care manufacturing plant at Brunswick Landing of the overall eff ectiveness of combining the federal and state New Markets tax credits to begin to rebuild a shallow economy that had just lost its major employer. "When the Brunswick Naval Air Station closed in 2011, we lost 6,000 jobs," says Spies, who lives in Brunswick and had been involved in the early redevelopment eff orts. " ere's no question the Navy was the economic driver of our local economy. It was a huge payroll [to lose]." Working closely with the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, CEI Capital Management allocated $14.26 million in federal tax cred- its in December 2011 to help build a 79,000-square-foot manufacturing plant for Mölnlycke, a global leader in wound care products. Two years later, it allocated an additional $10 million through the state program to install state-of-the-art equipment in that building. More than 50 new jobs were created, providing an early boost to MRRA's redevelopment eff orts. "Mölnlycke had the opportunity to expand production facilities in Finland and they were also looking at other sites in the United States and Asia," he says. "In part, their decision to come here to Maine was based on how we were able to put together a fi nancing pack- age to locate at Brunswick Landing. We talk a lot about manufacturing in Maine and the loss of manufacturing jobs. Well, we now have at Brunswick Landing a state-of-the-art globally competitive company right here. I feel really good about that." e bottom line: e New Markets tax credits are doing their job, both in Maine and beyond, says Spies. " e projects are diverse, they're impactful, they're helping diff erent seg- ments of Maine's economy," he says. Ja m e s M c Ca rt h y , M a i n e b i z s e n i o r writer, can be reached at jmcc arthy @ mainebiz.biz and @ Jame sMainebiz » C O N T I N U E D F RO M P R E V I O U S PA G E Business Services Yes. We Do That. 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