LIVERMORE FALLS — The developer of the Lamb Block building has been notified that the project on Depot Street will receive $960,000 in tax credits over a seven-year period.

Kevin Bunker, a principal of Developers Collaborative in Portland and in Lamb Block Associates LLC in Livermore Falls, plans to invest about $2 million in the renovation and restoration project.

The project is expected to create jobs, including construction and those of new tenants in the building, and retain existing jobs at the federally qualified HealthReach Clinic, which will fill the third floor and part of the second floor. HealthReach has a center in a different location in Livermore Falls and will be moving to the Lamb Block to be closer to Androscoggin Valley Medical Arts Center, which was developed by Bunker for Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington.

The restoration has been under way since July.

Coastal Enterprise Capital Management LLC of Portland announced last week that the Livermore Falls project would be allocated $960,000 in federal tax credits through the New Markets Tax Credits Program, according to a news release. The firm announced that the $1 million in federal tax credits that is staying in Maine during this round is part of $63 million awarded.

The tax credits total 39 percent of the original project investment and are claimed by developers over a period of seven years, according to CEI’s website.

“The New Markets Tax Credit program was established to help attract capital to historically under-served projects and communities. It provides an incentive to debt and equity investors though a 39 percent federal income tax credit for investing capital into qualified projects in eligible low-income areas. CEI’s NMTC work is done through its wholly-owned subsidiary CEI Capital Management LLC,” the website states.

Tax credits are extremely complicated, Bunker said Monday. The $960,000 is a permanent loan debt interest rate subsidized by the New Markets Tax Credits, he said.

The interest rate would have been 2 to 3 percent higher without the tax credit program, he said.

Bunker said he was pleased to get the tax credits.

In addition to the tax credits for the project, Bunker was able to use a letter from Gov. Paul LePage this past summer as collateral to get a $400,000 loan for renovation of the building from the Maine Rural Development Authority.

The town of Livermore Falls had applied for and was awarded a $400,00 grant through the state’s Communities for Maine’s Future program. The governor decided earlier this year not to sell $3.5 million in bonds related to the future program, which was part of a $25 million community development bond approved by voters in 2010.

Bunker’s project would have fallen apart without the grant, he said, because he had counted it in his financial package for the project and needed to get the project started to get the clinic in by the end of the year. The governor had a letter issued to Bunker in July stating that bonds would be issued in that amount by June 20, 2015, to repay the loan.

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