COVER STORY

The incubator is incubating.

Seacoast Suites for Business and Technology, a 35,000-square-foot center on Merrill Drive in Hampton, is nearly leased out since Coastal Economic Development Corp. bought the property for $1.95 million in 2003. Today it is home to 16 tenants and more than 60 employees.

More than just office space, the center offers lab areas for new and smaller high-tech companies to grow. Success is rooted in offering short-term leases that emerging companies and new entrepreneurs can handle, says Daniel Gray, managing director of the Coastal Economic Development Corp.

"They don't know what tomorrow will bring," he says.

Coastal Economic Development Corp., as a nonprofit organization, offers affordable rental rates, but Gray said they are not much lower than market. Tenants include an optical engineering lab, a computer engineering company, and two companies that work closely with the Navy.

When it comes to leveraging the financial muscle to start or expand a company, Gray says companies have more opportunities today than they did a decade ago. Regional economic development agencies, like his organization, roll out the red carpet. Gray notes his team will help a business people pull information together and help them work with a bank to get outside financing.

"We work hand-in-hand with the banks," he says.

Coastal's public and private funding partners include the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority, New Hampshire Business Finance Authority, Citizens Bank, Provident Bank, Community Bank and Trust, and Centrix Bank. Gray is also chairman of the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority.

Other projects spearheaded recently by Coastal Economic Development Corp. include funding to partially support a new building for Port City Air, a fixed-base operator at Pease International Airport. Port City Air received a $375,000 loan from the federal Community Development Block Grant program to develop a center to serve aviation-related clients.

Among other financing vehicles, Coastal recently received a $500,000 award through the USDA Rural Development initiative. Loans up to $125,000 may be available for eligible projects.

Financial advice is readily available online for commercial and personal consumers.

Perhaps nowhere is this e-commerce evolution more apparent than with the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority's latest consumer education campaign, called Don't Borrow Trouble New Hampshire, designed to thwart the impact of predatory lending practices.

The authority joined several private and public organizations late last year, including Citizens Bank and Freddie Mac, to roll out a Web site and ads warning about exorbitant interest rates, excessive fees and pressuring tactics.

"Low- and moderate-income families, minorities, and the elderly are often targets for unscrupulous lending schemes," said Claira P. Monier, executive director of the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority.

The Web site is dontborrowtroublenh.org. The Internet helps people understand the many ins and outs, as well as the opportunities. "In the old days you went to your local bank and all that was there was a 30-year mortgage," she notes.

Monier, who this month celebrates 19 years at New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority, says the efforts to help first-time home buyers are making an economic splash across Maine and New Hampshire. The U.S. homeowner average is 69 percent, compared to Maine and New Hampshire hovering at 73 percent, according to Monier. The states also have the highest percentage of second homes.

Monier says consumers are much more savvy when it comes to managing their finances, even with large projects like buying a first home. "You have to do a lot more homework," she says.