news-record.com

GREENSBORO — The Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship, a Greensboro business incubator, has agreed to a financing plan that will give it approximately $2 million to renovate its new building on South Elm-Eugene Street.

The center, which houses and fosters new businesses, still will need an additional $400,000 for construction, said Sam Funchess, the center's president and CEO.

The financing is coming from Stonehenge Capital Company LLC. Assuming the incubator abides by certain terms of the agreement, the loan principal will be forgiven after seven years, Funchess said. The incubator hopes to move into the new building by the end of this year.

The nonprofit currently rents 80,000 square feet from Revolution Mill Studios and leases that space to about 66 small businesses. But the owners of Revolution Mill want to take over Nussbaum’s space when the lease expires next year, and that has the center in a bind.

D.H. Griffin, an investor in development projects related to Revolution Mill, is also an owner of the vacant Carolina Steel property at 1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. He and fellow investors donated a building there to the center. Center officials since have been trying to raise funds to renovate the space.

The Nussbaum incubator is designed to support non-retail, new or emerging businesses. The Center provides shared support services such as business counseling, receptionist, copier, fax, mail boxes, and word processing along with office and light manufacturing space.