SBA administrator visiting Rhode Island

Steve Preston, administrator for the U.S. Small Business Administration, began a 24-hour stay in Rhode Island yesterday that will include meetings with bankers, small-business owners, and public officials, including Governor Carcieri. Preston is scheduled to meet business leaders at a breakfast at Banneker Industries in North Smithfield this morning . Later today, he’ll travel to the State House to talk with Carcieri and local bankers. He’ll spend part of the afternoon at Naval Station Newport and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center before heading back to Washington, D.C.

Crossroads’ Copy Center opens Monday

Crossroads Rhode Island, the provider of services for the homeless, will open its new retail space for The Copy Center at Crossroads on Monday at 160 Broad St., Providence. The Copy Center at Crossroads is a mission-driven social venture offering a full range of copy, printing and graphic design services, while providing a vocational training program. “Our new street-level facility will allow The Copy Center to provide higher-quality service and products to our customers while allowing more room for the training and development program for our clients” says Anne Nolan, president of Crossroads.

$1-billion solar-electricity plant planned

Coming soon after Allco Renewable Energy’s proposal to build a 90-acre, 8-megawatt solar farm in Coventry, FPL Group, the largest operator of solar electricity in the United States, announced plans Wednesday to build a solar plant in the Mojave Desert. The Beacon Solar Energy Project would have a 250-megawatt capacity and be located on a 2,000-acre site in Kern County, Calif., said FPL, based in Juno Beach, Fla. The project’s cost is expected to be about $1 billion, Steve Stengel, a company spokesman, said. FPL Energy, a unit of FPL Group, said it wants to add at least 600 megawatts of new solar power to its capacity by 2015.

RaythEon’s Portsmouth unit gets Navy work

Raytheon Co.’s Seapower Capability Center in Portsmouth will be one of the units of the company’s Integrated Defense Systems division that will perform the work of a newly awarded $17.8-million contract from the Navy and NATO for missile systems. Under the contract, IDS will assemble, test and deliver components and support for the Seasparrow systems, which provide critical self-defense capabilities for U.S. and allied navy surface ships. They are the primary self-defense weapons system on U.S. aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships. Charles “Tom” Bush, vice president of Seapower Capability Systems, said, “We’ve worked very hard to ensure that we are delivering the most effective solution that accomplishes the mission the first time and every time.”

REPORT: Movie tax breaks hurting Mass.

Movie tax breaks embraced by Massachusetts Governor Patrick and lawmakers could end up costing the state $138 million in lost revenues even as they spark a film-making renaissance, according to a report by the state Department of Revenue. The report is quick to point out that some of the lost revenues will be offset by increased personal income, business and other taxes generated by film productions that wouldn’t have been made here without the tax breaks. The report also finds that the 88 film productions with end dates between 2006 and 2008 — and thus eligible for the film tax credits and sales tax exemptions — spent a total of $544 million in the state. But the report also cautioned that any estimate of the economic impact of the tax credits “needs to take into account the reduction in state government spending that occurs as a result of decreased tax revenues available to state programs.”

Starbucks facing ‘tip’ suit in Massachusetts

Starbucks Corp., stung by a California judge’s ruling ordering it to pay $106 million in tips and interest to baristas, is facing a similar lawsuit in Massachusetts. A Somerville man who worked briefly as a barista at a Starbucks in Brookline claims the coffee retailer required him to share his tips with shift supervisors. The lawsuit alleges that the practice is a violation of a state law that prohibits managerial employees from sharing tips reserved for waiters and other employees who can legally be paid below the minimum wage. Hernan Matamoros, 18, filed the suit in Suffolk Superior Court on Tuesday on behalf of thousands of baristas who have worked at the 199 Starbucks stores in Massachusetts over the past six years. Lawyers for Matamoros are asking a state judge to certify the case as a class-action lawsuit.

Otis Elevator wins award in China

The China Association for Quality Promotion has recognized Otis Elevator Co., of Farmington, Conn., as a leading service provider in China for consistent national service, standardized processes and best-in-class response time. Otis was the only elevator company to receive the distinction and one of only 15 companies selected out of the 2,339 evaluated. CAQP, an organization affiliated with the Chinese government, measured each company’s responsiveness to service calls across 78 cities in China over the past seven years. Otis is a unit of Hartford-based United Technologies Corp.

Sunday River resort to install ‘chondola’

The Sunday River ski resort in Newry, Maine, on Wednesday unveiled plans to install the first “chondola” in the Northeast for the 2008-2009 ski season. Resort officials said the $7.2-million lift is a combination chairlift-gondola featuring detachable six-person chairs with four-person gondola cabins interspersed among the chairs. The lift will carry skiers, snowboarders and summer visitors from the South Ridge base area to the North Peak in a single lift ride. According to Sunday River, there are just three other chondolas in North America –– in California, Colorado and Quebec. The new lift is the centerpiece of $14 million in improvements scheduled at the resort this summer. Plans are in the works to cut new ski trails, buy new snowmaking equipment, build new bike and walking paths, and upgrade condos and hotels.

Vermont Yankee nearer operating extension

The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant has moved another big step closer to being run for 20 years beyond its currently scheduled 2012 shutdown date with the approval of its license renewal application by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel. The federal agency’s advisory committee on reactor safeguards said it had reviewed a safety evaluation last week conducted by NRC staff and concurred with the staff that Vermont Yankee, a 650-megawatt reactor in Vernon in the state’s southeast corner, could operate safely until 2032. It also agreed with the staff’s call for more analysis of metal fatigue in some plant components, including the nozzles of valves used to move water to and from the reactor.

Hannaford breach threatens CREDIT UNIONS

Maine banks and credit unions could face greater exposure to theft of credit and debit card numbers from the Hannaford Bros. Co. data breach than from the far-larger TJX Cos. breach because of the concentration of Hannaford supermarkets in the state, an official says. Maine has 51 Hannaford supermarkets and another 19 independent markets that sell Hannaford products, compared with just 15 TJX-owned stores. And people tend to spend more in supermarkets since they’re often shopping there once or twice a week, said John Paradise of the Maine Credit Union League. Already, the 68 credit unions that belong to the Maine Credit Union League are reissuing upward of 100,000 credit and debit cards to try to limit the amount of fraud, Paradise said. Hannaford, based in Scarborough, Maine, disclosed last week that 4.2 million credit and debit cards were exposed during a data breach and that 1,800 of the cards had been used fraudulently.