www.newrivervalley.com

FAIRLAWN -- Business has picked up in the incubator at the New River Valley Competitiveness Center but it is still stretching to make ends meet.

The incubator, a facility that nurtures start-up businesses, needs to bring in about $360,000 annually in rents from tenants to operate and make payments on loans that helped create it. At this time, it seems to be heading for revenue of $225,000 to $230,000 for this year.

It is making up the difference by borrowing more money.

Earlier this year, the New River Valley Development Corp., which operates the center, approached local governments in the New River Valley for loans to help it meet its debt repayments and monthly operating costs.

Pulaski County has come through with a $5,000 loan, but other localities took a wait-and-see attitude. The facility has also secured a $150,000 loan from the National Bank of Blacksburg to help cover its operations.

The center was built between 1997 and 1999 on land in Fairlawn provided by Pulaski County with a $2 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant and $1 million Rural Development loan. Its small business incubator filled with tenants within a year of its completion.

The nonprofit corporation secured another $2 million EDA grant and a $1.3 million loan from the National Bank of Blacksburg to expand the facility by 23,000 square feet, bringing it to its present 54,000-square-foot total. In the interim the economy bogged down, all but eliminating the waiting list of tenants.

The situation has improved, but the incubator is not in the black yet, Wayne Carpenter, its manager, told the Virginia's First Regional Industrial Facility Authority board on Wednesday.

"We're not quite as desperate as we were six months ago," he said.

More fledgling business are renting office spaces now, taking advantage of the business incubator's shared Internet, telephone, fax, copier and printer equipment and the mentoring and training provided through Carpenter's office.

The incubator has 19 tenants. But it has not rented out two of its largest spaces, a pair of 4,000-square-foot industrial bays that go for $7,000 a month. If the incubator was pulling in those two rents now, Carpenter said, it would be breaking even.

The incubator has increased its office rents slightly and reduced expenses where it could, Carpenter said. The development corporation is looking at options for the 10 acres around the competitiveness center to see if they can generate money in some way to reduce debt. "We haven't taken anything off the table," Carpenter said.

One of the center's existing businesses is looking at expanding into one of the bays, and there is a potential new business that could occupy the moving enterprise's space. "But we don't count those until somebody signs on the dotted line," Carpenter said.