News/Blog Archives

By Troy R. Bennett, Times Record Staff
Published: Wednesday, May 18, 2011 2:10 PM EDT

With a little help from Coastal Enterprises, Inc., Connie deBrun has transformed her affinity for classic pictures into a thriving business, offering a wide array of products featuring slices of her collection. She calls it AntiquiTEES.

Read the full article here.

MILBRIDGE, Maine — Rental applications are now available for Hand in Hand Apartments, the first complex of its kind in the country directed toward families who work in the agricultural and aquacultural sectors.

Read the full story here.

Grant resources to train new and existing employees are now available for green businesses in York, Cumberland, Sagadahoc, Lincoln, Knox, Waldo, Penobscot, Hancock and Piscataquis Counties. Coastal Enterprises, Inc. has received funding of $250,000 from the U.S. Department of Labor to offer customized training to upgrade the skills of both dislocated and currently-employed workers, in order to more effectively match the workforce needs of businesses.

This 18-month program is designed to grow the green jobs sector in Maine. CEI will link job-generating businesses in the renewable energy and energy efficiency, value-added agriculture, and green manufacturing sectors to workforce training resources. These funds will provide businesses with resources for on-the-job and specialized training, utilizing and complementing existing education and training programs, and will be designed to address the specific training gaps identified by the three targeted industry sectors.

“Targeted and tailored training is critical to match the skills of workers with the needs of green businesses,” said Ron Phillips, President of CEI. CEI will target 50 workers, including 30 employees needing skills upgrades and 20 dislocated workers who will move into new jobs.

CEI has already identified a demand for workers in small, environmentally focused businesses that expect to create dozens of jobs. In addition to being constrained by capital for growth, many green firms are also limited in their ability to find adequately trained workers. CEI will work closely with the two workforce Investment Boards in these regions, Coastal Counties Workforce, Inc. and the Tri-County Workforce Investment Board to implement the program.

CEI has financed over 40 job-generating green small businesses mobilizing some $14 million of capital investment and creating/retaining over 2,000 jobs for low income and other workers. This 18-month initiative works with CEI’s lending and business counseling services, with a focus on workforce development, to help grow job-creating/retaining green small businesses in Maine.

For more information, contact Gerard Salvo at grs@ceimaine.org or 207-882-7552.

Wiscasset, ME. Tom Gallant and Ann McAlhany, certified business counselors for the Maine Small Business Development Centers, have relocated to the new SBDC office at Coastal Enterprises Inc. at One Cumberland Place in Bangor. They serve the Bangor region including Penobscot, Piscataquis and northern Hancock counties.

Counselors can help prepare business plans and financial documents that will guide business owners in decision making and prepare them for business loans from banks or other lenders. The services are offered free to business owners, entrepreneurs and others considering new business ideas. The counselors provide a “reality check and help entrepreneurs test their strategies,” said Gallant.

The selection of CEI for Bangor’s SBDC office was unanimous and reached independently by reviewers from the University of Southern Maine (USM), the Maine SBDC center at USM, Maine's Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) and the Maine SBDC. “CEI’s proposal was thorough, thoughtful and ranked highest by all reviewers. . .the submittal underscored CEI’s distinguished long-time partnership yet it was delivered with a fresh approach and a renewed commitment to our shared goals,” said Mark Delisle, State Director of the Maine SBDC.

Gallant is the Director of CEI’s SBDC office in Bangor, a role he held for 9 years at EMDC. He has an MBA from the University of Southern Maine, 20 years of corporate management experience and has owned two small businesses. He also received SBA’s Maine State Star Award for business counseling excellence for 4 of the past 6 years.

McAlhany, also formerly with EMDC, has a master’s degree in Global Supply Chain Logistics from Maine Maritime Academy. Previously she worked at CEI as a Women’s Business Center counselor in Washington County, and she owned her own small business.

Keith Bisson, CEI's Director of the Northern Heritage Development Fund, Rural Resources and Policy, is also located in the Bangor office.

The Bangor center is managed by Coastal Enterprises, Inc., a nonprofit lender and community development financial institution headquartered in Wiscasset, with 10 offices across the state. Since its founding in 1978, CEI has helped finance over 2,000 businesses with nearly $700 million in loans.

CEI is one of 46 entities awarded funds by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Community Services (OCS), to capitalize the Growing Rural Energy and Environmental Networks Revolving Loan Fund (GREEN Fund). OCS funds will provide $600,000 for small business lending, which will be leveraged with another $600,000 of other, primarily private, capital. It will target Maine’s economically distressed Central and Western counties: Oxford, Franklin, Somerset, Androscoggin, Kennebec and Penobscot. The fund will help create 65 full-time jobs for low-income people and provide flexible financing to green and clean-energy small businesses in the region. Seventy-five per cent of the jobs will be targeted to low-income people and will pay at least $9.00-$14.00/hour with benefits.

This award expands CEI’s green revolving loan fund in light of the economic recession, loss of jobs, the threat of global warming, volatile fuel costs, and an unsustainable dependence on oil. Job creating businesses are emerging in response to these challenges, and CEI is in a unique position to seize upon investment opportunities for the economy as a whole and for the benefit of low-income Mainers. Maine is a small business state, where 97% of businesses have fewer than 50 employees. Since its 1994 market study – Environmental Industries in Maine: Opportunities for Development and Policy Support – that identified green small business investment opportunities, CEI has financed over 40 job-generating green small businesses, mobilizing some $14 million of capital investment and creating/retaining over 2,000 jobs for low income and other workers.

CEI is one of 179 community development finance institutions (CDFI) nationwide to receive an award from the US Treasury CDFI Fund for FY11.  CEI has been awarded $750,000, the maximum grant this year.  The funds will be used to capitalize CEI’s Green Loan Fund, which provides capital to businesses to lower their energy costs or to deliver green and sustainable goods and services. A portion of the funds will be targeted to community-scale alternative energy projects such as wind, solar or tidal power.

For more information on this award, please visit: http://www.cdfifund.gov/news_events/CDFI-2010-38-TreasuryAwards100MillionToBenefitCommunities.asp