After Schilling, more firms scouting RI

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - The publicity attracted by Rhode Island’s high-profile agreement to guarantee a $75 million loan to Curt Schilling’s company has led to a spurt of interest in expanding here among other businesses.

More than a half-dozen companies from around the area have contacted the R.I. Economic Development Corporation over the last week to get information about obtaining financing after learning about its availability because of the Schilling deal, Melissa Chambers, a spokeswoman for the agency, told Eyewitness News.

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The businesses include five from Rhode Island, “a handful in Massachusetts and a couple in Connecticut,” and represent companies in the information-technology, media, financial services and life sciences industries, Chambers said. She declined to name them.

“We’re getting inquiries every day,” she said. “This is pretty much a direct result of all the media coverage we had” after the EDC’s board agreed to back the loan to Schilling’s video-game company, 38 Studios.

The discussions between EDC officials and the companies’ executives are only “initial conversations” about the programs available and do not guarantee that anything will happen, Chambers said. “But that’s how it starts,” she said.

Loan aid added

State leaders took a number of steps earlier this year to make it easier for firms to obtain financing to add jobs or expand their operations. The EDC is now authorized to help businesses get a combined $315 million in financing through eight programs .

In March, the R.I. Industrial Recreational Building Authority, created in 1958, was expanded to allow the state to guarantee a maximum of $60 million in loans from banks to private firms, up from $20 million previously. Gov. Donald L. Carcieri had originally proposed raising the limit to $80 million.

In June, lawmakers created the new Job Creation Guaranty Program to guarantee up to $125 million in loans to companies in the science, technology, digital media and advanced manufacturing industries. The $75 million guarantee for 38 Studios came from that program, which was created partly for that purpose.

The new program is more flexible than the others, which will make it easier for the EDC’s board to provide backing to technology companies like Schilling’s, Keith Stokes, the agency’s executive director, told Eyewitness News last week.

“Six months ago, there was no capital credit program like this – it didn’t exist,” Stokes said. The potential Schilling deal “provided context to what these monies could be used for,” which helped him convince lawmakers to create it, he said.