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Company eyes EB-5 regional center in Vermont
A Massachusetts-based company has applied to become an EB-5 regional center, hoping to build a $500 million wood pellet manufacturing facility and biomass plant in Vermont.
Beaver Wood Energy is hoping that the EB-5 visa program will help it fund the proposed project, which is planned for the former site of the Green Mountain Race Track in Pownal, Vermont, according to the Bennington Banner.
The EB-5 visa program was started in 1990 to help American businesses attract foreign capital. If a foreign national invests $1 million in a U.S. business and that investment leads to the creation or preservation of 10 jobs the investor becomes green card eligible.
EB-5 regional centers help manage and direct EB-5 investments and can be a private entrepreneur or corporation or a government agency. Some EB-5 regional centers are located in Targeted Employment Areas, which are distinguished by an unemployment rate higher than the national average. Only $500,000 need be invested in such areas.
Thomas Emero, a managing director with Beaver Wood Energy, said the EB-5 visa program is a win-win situation.
“You don’t just invest money, you have to invest money in the state that creates jobs,” he told the news source. “To me, that’s a foreign investor that has a vested interest in the country he’s coming to. He’s already a giver, not just a taker.”
The wood pellet facility and the biomass plant are each expected to cost $250 million and Beaver Wood Energy is hoping to raise 10 percent, or $50 million, of the total cost for both through the EB-5 visa program, Ted Verrill, a managing director for the company, told the news provider.
However Verrill said that the EB-5 regional center is still in its development stage.
“No lender is going to put money out the door … unless you have the governmental approval in place,” he told the Banner. “We’re not at the stage where we can entertain approaching foreign investors or anything of that nature.”
Vermont has been one of the most successful states at using the EB-5 visa program.
The state itself has been running an EB-5 regional center since 1997, which recently has focused on the expansion of the Jay Peak resort.
According to James Candido, an economic development specialist with the Vermont Department of Economic Development, the state’s EB-5 regional center has created more than 1,000 jobs throughout its history.