SARANAC LAKE — North Country business owners seeking to retire or transition to different ownership models will soon have a new program to help support their business goals. The Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA), a regional nonprofit, announced it will be awarded a $248,364 grant from the Northern Border Regional Commission (NBRC) to fund its new Adirondack North Country Center for Businesses in Transition. 

The new center will help retiring business owners as well as aspiring entrepreneurs in “successfully sustaining local businesses for the benefit of their communities and future generations,” ANCA said in a news release. The center will be based out of ANCA’s Saranac Lake office and will utilize staff and resource partners to reach business owners throughout the Adirondack North Country region. 

“ANCA is thrilled with this award,” Kate Fish the association’s executive director, said in the release. “We recently conducted an in-depth analysis of the economy of the region which revealed that over 10,000 businesses are in danger of closing down as Baby Boomer owners retire without clear strategies to transition their businesses to new ownership. The funds from the Northern Border Regional Commission support our work in helping keep these businesses going. They are crucial to our communities in terms of jobs, the services they provide and the vitality of main streets.” 

The main objectives of the center’s efforts are to engage retiring and up-and-coming business owners by connecting them with resources and networks and assisting with business-transition planning. In its first three years, the program seeks to identify at least 4,800 businesses for succession-planning outreach, assist 240 businesses in developing transition strategies, and help 50 entrepreneurs plan for taking over an existing business. 

The grant funding will support one full-time coordinator and three part-time community liaisons, who will conduct “boots-on-the-ground outreach,” the release noted. ANCA staff will collaborate closely with public, private and nonprofit partners to identify businesses in need and connect them to appropriate resources and/or matchmaking with entrepreneurs.

NBRC is a federal-state partnership for economic and community development within the most distressed counties of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York.

New York dairy farms produced 1.27 billion pounds of milk in June, up 1.4 percent from 1.25 billion pounds in the year-ago period, the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service recently reported.

Production per cow in the state averaged 2,040 pounds in June, up 1.5 percent from 2,010 pounds in June 2017. The number of milk cows on farms in New York state totaled 623,000 head in June, off slightly from 624,000 a year before, the USDA said.

The average milk price received by New York dairy farmers in May was $16.40 per hundredweight, up 30 cents from April, but down 50 cents from May 2017.

In neighboring Pennsylvania, dairy farms produced 904 million pounds of milk in June, down 0.2 percent from 906 million eggs in June 2017.

New York farms produced 132 million eggs in June, down 5.2 percent from 139.3 million eggs in the year-ago period, the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service recently reported.

The total number of layers in the Empire State fell nearly 7 percent to 5.31 million eggs this June from 5.7 million eggs in June 2017. 

New York egg production per 100 layers totaled 2,427 eggs in June, down 0.7 percent from 2,444 eggs in the year-earlier period.

In neighboring Pennsylvania, egg production edged up 0.3 percent to 670.5 million eggs in June from 668.2 million eggs a year prior, the USDA reported. 

Egg production in the U.S. as a whole increased 2.2 percent to 8.83 billion eggs in June from 8.64 billion eggs in the year-ago month.