Mainebiz

V O L . X X I I I N O. I I JA N UA R Y 2 3 , 2 0 1 7 6 small- to medium-sized businesses, defined in Maine as those with one to 50 employees. e new law, co-spon- sored by U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, only requires MEP to match $1 for each $1 in federal money. e new Manufacturing Extension Partnership Improvement Act is part of the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act. Maine has 1,600 manufacturers and 80% have 50 employees or fewer. N O T E W O R T H Y S T A T E W I D E U.S. Cellular relocated its Farmington retail location at 642 Wilton Road to 646 Wilton Road, increasing its space from 2,000 square feet to 3,000 square feet. The company also built a new cell site in Bangor to increase capacity. U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a $6 million grant through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program to a Maine partnership led by The Nature Conservancy that will help private forestland owners reduce the impacts that flooding has on road networks and restore more than 250 miles of fish habitat in northern and eastern Maine. Portland to host women's basketball tournaments e America East Women's Basketball Championship will be held at the Cross Insurance Arena for the next two years. Eight teams will meet for the tournament this March 4-5, play- ing for a chance to represent the con- ference at the NCAA Championship. e tournament will be held again in Portland in March 2018. It's the first time in two decades the event has been held in Maine. e conference struck the deal with Shamrock Sports & Entertainment, the Maine Sports Commission and Cross Insurance Arena. e conference includes the University of Maine, University of New Hampshire, University of Vermont, Binghamton University, University of Hartford, University of Albany, Stony Brook University, University of Maryland-Baltimore County and UMass-Lowell. Tilson tops Maine's VC deals in Q4 As venture capital dollars and deals went soft in the fourth quarter of last year, one Maine company, Tilson Technology, pulled in a respectable $3 million in investment from CEI Ventures. e Portland-based IT services company was a runner up in Mainebiz's 2016 Fastest Growing Companies in Maine list. For the year, Maine had three venture capital deals totaling $6.35 million. at's down from five deals totaling $72.8 million in 2015, an amount that was skewed high by one large deal of $52.3 million to Direct Vet Marketing Inc., a Portland-based veterinary services company that does business as Vets First Choice. e data was released Jan. 11 by PricewaterhouseCoopers MoneyTree Report with data from CB Insights. In the fourth quarter of 2016, investors deployed $11.7 bil- lion to U.S. venture capital-backed startups across 982 deals, down 17% in dollars and 14% in deals from the third quarter of the same year. Both quarterly figures also were down from the final quarter of 2015, and set the quarterly lows for 2016. New law could help smaller manufacturers A new federal law is expected to help Maine's Manufacturing Extension Partnership program have more pre- dictable and stable financing, MEP Center Director Larry Robinson told Mainebiz. Until now, the federal government supplied $1 for each $2 MEP could match through its consulting activities with the state's B U S I N E S S M A I N E Business news from around the state S T A T E W I D E S O U T H E R N Nonprofit acquires Millinocket mill site B y J a m e s M c C a r t h y Millinocket — Our Katahdin, a nonprofit, has purchased the former Great Northern Paper assets in Millinocket and plans an industrial park. The deal — which includes all property and liabilities held by GNP West Inc., GNP Holding II Inc. and the New England Center for Business Development — closed on Jan. 11. The deal includes the 1,400-acre former mill site, land adjacent to the Millinocket Municipal Airport, a 157-acre parcel at Ferguson Pond and a Regional EB-5 Center that carries a federal designation enabling foreign investment. The purchase price of $1 comes with approximately $1.4 million in tax liability to the Internal Revenue Service and $164,353 in unpaid real estate taxes as well as additional back taxes on business equipment that's owed to the Town of Millinocket, according to Our Katahdin's announcement of the purchase. "We know this purchase comes with enormous responsibility," Sean DeWitt, president of Our Katahdin, said. "We can't promise instant results, but we can guarantee our best effort to help transform this idle industrial site into a productive, innovative bio-industrial park that leverages the comparative advantages of our region. This site is our heri- tage. We strongly believe in its future." The sale signals the exit of Cate Street Capital, though one of its investments, Thermogen Industries LLC, will stay on as a tenant, the Bangor Daily News reported. The Millinocket mill property had been envisioned as the site for a multi- phase $250 million bio-coal manufacturing facility proposed by Thermogen. Those plans were later scrapped in favor of a proposed $140 million steam-thermal plant using wood pellet technology similar to plants in Crockett, Texas, and Selma, Ala., but to date have not materialized. Millinocket plans to collaborate on mill's transformation Tax liens filed against GNP West and GNP Holding II will be subject to a six-month waiver, approved Jan. 12 by the Millinocket Town Council. "The best scenario for the citizens of Millinocket is to get the mill site back into service as an industrial park, with the EB-5 designation and environmental agreements intact," Mike Madore, chairman of the Millinocket Town Council, said in a written statement. "A collaboration between the town and Our Katahdin gives us the capacity to begin the hard work of transforming the mill site into a world-class industrial park. This is about using the incredible assets we have in the area to bring jobs and investment to the town." Madore said all the parties will be working together to marshal grants, create investment, incentives and "engage the local community in the process of redevelopment." Our Katahdin plans to utilize its community investment arm, Our Katahdin Investments, which also is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, to provide opportunities for citizens to invest in the redevelopment of the mill site. "We are grateful that Our Katahdin was able to acquire the mill site and all other assets as a single unit. It was better for all parties that the purchase was finalized with the real estate, industrial assets and critical federal and state designations intact," Dewitt said, noting that discussions about the mill site between the nonprofit and the GNP enti- ties began in the summer of 2016. B R I E F The former Great Northern Paper mill in Millinocket, as seen from the site of the proposed Thermogen wood pellet facility that never materialized. P H O T O / JA M E S M C C A R T H Y

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