N.Y. firm to lend $3.5 billion for Idaho N-plant

BOISE — A small New York lender that says it will lend $3.5 billion to a nuclear power plant project in Idaho specializes in loans to bed and breakfasts, miniwarehouses, bars and gas stations, making it an unconventional candidate to help pay for a new commercial reactor.

Cobblestone Financial Group, in the Erie Canal town of Fairport, N.Y., has given Alternate Energy Holdings a letter of intent "to fund 100 percent of its proposed Idaho Energy Complex" on 4,000 acres in Owyhee County near the Snake River, an official with the Idaho project said Wednesday.

According to Cobblestone's Web site, the company focuses "on complex and troublesome commercial real estate loans," including for "condotels," miniwarehouses, self storage, mobile-home parks, bed and breakfasts and gas stations.

Don Gillispie, chairman of Virginia-based Alternate Energy Holdings, conceded he hasn't met personally with Cobblestone's chief executive officer M. Lyndon Matteson or with its vice president, Robert Jackson, to arrange the transaction. Still, Gillispie trusts them because he knows Matteson "through a family friend, who grew up with him," he said.

"They (Cobblestone) sent me a letter, saying they had investors," Gillispie told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "This is a whole new thing for them. I have a letter that says they'll do it, they've talked to the people who will lend the money, and they're willing."

Phone calls by the AP to Matteson and Jackson at Cobblestone, which New York state records show was started in 2005, weren't returned. Gillispie also declined to give the AP a copy of Cobblestone's letter of intent for the loan.

Concern over America's energy independence and greenhouse-gas emissions that cause global warming has fueled renewed interest in nuclear power.

Still, many expect new reactors will be built by a well-financed utility or utility groups — not a tiny startup like Alternate Energy Holdings whose shares trade on a stock exchange for companies that don't meet NASDAQ capitalization requirements and aren't required to disclose their financial information.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C., which regulates about 100 U.S. nuclear power plants, keeps a list of expected new applications to build a nuclear plant. The list now numbers 17 companies, including Duke Energy, with $15 billion in annual revenue. Alternate Energy Holdings isn't on the list.

"Those applications that we expect to come in initially are all from experienced nuclear power plant operators," said Holly Harrington, an agency spokeswoman. "They (Alternate Energy Holdings) haven't come in with any formal paperwork. Not to say that they won't, but they haven't yet."

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