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Early last month �պ����� Office of Engagement (OoE) staff ventured to northeastern Vermont to make personal connections with economic development professionals and business leaders in the region.  

Director Chris Koliba and Senior Business Outreach Professional Wayne Maceyka stopped in Newport, Jay, Lyndonville and St. Johnsbury during the intensive two-day visit July 6-7. The region has long been referred to as Vermont’s “Northeast Kingdom”, encompassing the rural counties of Essex, Orleans and Caledonia. Koliba and Maceyka found a diversity of enterprises that defies easy categorization about regional identity. 

“We were impressed with the diversity of industries, the innovation that’s taking place in the tech sector, and family-run businesses that have grown over the years to service customers all over the country,” Maceyka said. 

The visit was the latest in OoE’s plan to meet Vermonters where they live and work, all over the state. Past outreach visits include stops in Brattleboro, Bennington, Rutland and the Randolph/Bethel area.  

“Zoom and Teams meetings still can’t reproduce the synergy that happens with face-to-face meetings,” Koliba said. “We see ourselves as facilitators of helping enterprises identify resources they need to succeed and grow.”  

Koliba and Maceyka spoke with business owners, non-profit directors, government officials and hospital executives from Newport to St. Johnsbury. The people they met were intensely interested in sharing workforce challenges, hosting �պ����� interns and tapping into �պ����� faculty expertise. It was also an opportunity for OoE to share more about , a �պ����� Professional and Continuing Education effort that provides free educational opportunities to eligible Vermonters. 

Key partners in these visits include regional development corporations staffed by people with deep knowledge about the local economy. In this case, facilitators were Dave Snedeker, executive director of the Northeastern Vermont Development Association (NVDA), and NVDA community and economic recovery specialist Annie McLean. 

Strong Public/Private Partnerships

“We face the same demographic challenges other regions in the state are grappling with, like workforce development,” said Snedeker. “That’s magnified given the geographically isolated regions in the northeast.” 

However he said the close proximity to population centers in nearby Quebec is a lever for commercial growth. “Interstate 91 gives us direct access to Canadian markets. We’ve done a good job of attracting enterprises form Quebec.” 

Snedeker introduced Koliba and Maceyka to Mike Desmarais, owner and CEO of Track Inc., North America’s largest dealer of high quality snow grooming equipment located in Newport. The company specializes in vehicles that groom trails for snowmobiles. 

Last month the Northeast Kingdom Development Corporation received $232,468 in grant funding to rehabilitate the now vacant Bogner building on behalf of Track, Inc. The grant program is administered by the state’s Capital Investment Program (CIP) which aims to strengthen communities through investments to businesses to retain existing jobs and spur economic growth. The grant is part of a larger $2.45 million project to renovate the Bogner plant and lease it to Track, Inc.

“The project will return a vacant, dilapidated manufacturing facility to productive use and accommodate Track, Inc., a growing trail-grooming and off-road equipment business," said Snedeker in a recent interview with The Caledonian Record.  

Desmarais said taking ownership of the plant will allow Track Inc. and other companies to create as many as 150 jobs developing, manufacturing and servicing smart off-road electric vehicles and batteries as well diesel vehicles.

A Diverse Manufacturing Base 

Koliba and Maceyka paid a visit to Momentum Manufacturing Group’s shop, which provides sheet metal fabrication and precision machining services including powder coating and assembly. The company was founded in 1982 as NSA Industries in St. Johnsbury and quickly established itself as a major player in the metal machining business. 

“The name ‘momentum’ comes from the progress they’re making due to new capital investment,” explained Maceyka.  

NSA made a series of acquisitions in New Hampshire and Massachusetts and, between 2010 and 2020, invested $50 million in new equipment. The name  Momentum Manufacturing Group was adopted in 2020. The company was awarded a 2021 Vermont Business Growth Award by the Vermont Business Magazine (VBM) and is recognized as one of the ten largest metal manufacturers in North America.  

One of Momentum Manufacturing Group’s local clients is Concept2, a Morrisville, Vt. business founded by two brothers in 1976. Dick and Pete Dreissigacker were elite rowers who began designing and crafting composite racing oars. In 1981, they created the Concept2 Indoor Rower, which became the best-selling rowing machine in the world used by Olympic athletes, cardiac rehab patients and individuals at home. 

The OoE team also visited Mobile Medical International, a company that introduced the world’s first mobile surgery unit, a temporary medical facility designed to provide an on-site solution for hospitals. 

“If a hospital was doing renovations in operating rooms, MMI provided these mobile self-contained systems to continue surgeries. The units are also useful for small rural hospitals,” Maceyka said. 

The trip also included a stop at Built by Newport, another small family business established in 1963 that has grown into an important producer of wood furniture for businesses. The company combines traditional craftmanship with modern technologies like CVC (computer numerical control) tools which can carve and mill pre-programmed designs for products including in dining chairs, accent tables and lounge seating. 

Built by Newport is interested in using wood adhesives in some of its products and the OoE is connecting them to experts in �պ�����’s chemistry department.  

Building Real and Virtual Business Communities

Entrepreneurs all over the state are finding value in coworking spaces which allow businesses to expand into new areas and access fresh talent pools without taking on the risk of long-term leasing.  

This phenomenon is alive and well in the Northeast Kingdom—Evan Carlson spearheaded , a coworking space in Lyndonville located in a former Bag Balm plant. One of the first tenants was Whiteout Solutions (formerly Whiteout) a geospatial technology company which founded by Matt Clark and Christine Heinrich, Carlson is a partner in the business and oversees the product and business development.

The building offers high speed internet and provides rentable office facilities for entrepreneurs and remote workers to network and collaborate. Do North is now operated by Northern Vermont University (NVU) and aims to help revitalize Lyndonville downtown area while hosting educational programs.   

Do North and NVA recently announced the first participants in the new —seven companies from throughout the northeast will take part in this four-month program that is open to startup and seed stage companies that are commercializing products, services, and technology in the forest industry. 

The space is funded largely through “drop-ins” (workers looking for a space to work at a rate of $20/day) or memberships which offer 24/7 access to the building. Corporate memberships are offered for businesses looking for a space to conduct team projects or open a satellite office. 

A native of Lyndonville, Carlson is an example of an entrepreneur who cut his teeth in software and responsive mobile development in Denver and New York City before moving back to the Kingdom to work remotely. He recalls an early experience after moving back to Lyndonville.  

“I had cable internet access which was better than most people here. I needed to upload a 10-gig file for a client and it took it took eight hours to upload. Then the connection dropped when the upload was at 98% so I had to start over.” 

Experiences like this led Carlson to chair the NEK Community Broadband which worked to develop a fiber optic network to deliver high speed internet access to every  e911 address in the Northeast Kingdom. A communications union district was established with 27 founding towns in March 2020. 

Carlson is among the growing number of individuals leveraging their skills and knowledge to create spaces convenient for remote workers while helping to build the physical and technological infrastructure needed to support them. 

“We still do have challenges—it’s a long process,” Carlson said. “It’s not just creating coworking space but giving remote workers access modern amenities and solving the larger problem of rural connectivity.”