But the rehab proved more costly than anticipated, and by mid-1997 Gray's construction bill was climbing toward $1 million. Although Shore.Net was flying sufficiently high to absorb most of the overrun, the company needed one more infusion to complete the project. When Gray's bank refused to extend his line of credit, the CEO appeared once more before the EDIC. Appraisers had calculated that the finished structure would be worth less than Gray had put into it, but even as friends, advisers, and prospective investors counseled him to bail, Shore.Net's founder stayed resolute. "I didn't care what the building would be worth down the road," he says. "I viewed it as an infrastructure investment, same as the network and the computers." Shore.Net might be an E-business, but its survival had become a question of bricks and mortar.
Property was cheap. Local politicos were supportive. Boston and Cambridge were nearby. And high-tech workers from surrounding towns hated their commutes.
Gray pleaded his case to the EDIC, throwing in a new angle: there were now legions of Internet start-ups looking for inexpensive space. Lynn had legions of vacant offices looking for tenants. "Lowell captured everyone's minds talking about what an urban area like ours can accomplish," says DeVeau. "It was like listening to someone spin a fable. People are hungry for that: most of the businesspeople who come before the board just want to complain about their taxes being too high or how hard it is to get transportation for their employees."
The board kicked in $100,000 to finish construction. "There's a lot we'd do to make sure he stays here," says Stephen Harausz, development director for the city. Indeed, if Gray had harbored any doubts about the city's unconditional love, they were laid to rest a few months later when he was voted Lynn's businessperson of the year.
In 1998, Shore.Net took over its new home, filling every square foot with its 60 employees. With thousands of customers throughout Massachusetts, the ISP was in the black and flush with a line of credit from a new commercial bank, which allowed it to pay off its EDIC loans. "I've had a lot of business owners come in all charged up, and then they end up failing on me," says DeVeau. "Lowell exceeded every promise he ever made to us."
Shore.Net built its impressive consumer and business-customer base despite stiff competition from larger ISPs. Generally eschewing advertising, Gray targeted small and midsize companies that needed more service and support than consumers did but lacked the heft to rate notice by the big guys. Scott Hersey, Shore.Net's vice-president of marketing, estimates that more than 80% of the company's new customers are referred by current customers, which include local consultants, systems integrators, and Web-site designers.
Shore.Net also distinguishes itself by giving a human face -- or voice -- to the highly automated commodity business of slinging bits. Shore.Net's customer-support reps, for example, are trained not to rush customers off the phone after responding to their queries but rather to offer assistance with other service issues. Each rep gets an average of four calls a day requesting him or her by name, and each becomes familiar with a few hundred customers. When the weather gets warmer, so do those relationships: every summer Shore.Net invites all its subscribers to a clambake on Lynn Beach. Some 400 turned out for last year's event.
Clambakes for customers are fine, but what matters to Lynn is jobs. Shore.Net has hired three-quarters of its now 75 employees from the North Shore, and about 15 of them are from Lynn. Some came straight from high school, including 21-year-old Jon Justian, known to his colleagues as "Jonj" because most people in the E-mail-centric company call one another by their user names. Justian was working in a pizza joint until two years ago, when Shore.Net snatched him up to help answer the phones. Justian taught himself programming in his spare time, and today he is leading the development of a major new account-management system. The company has also accepted several interns from Lynn Vocational Technical Institute and is launching an internship program with North Shore Community College's Lynn campus.
Shore.Net is also popular with local working mothers, who like its proximity and supportive culture. Mary Ann Reyes ("Mareyes"), 28, had briefly been on public assistance to support her two children before working her way up to a job in sales support with MCI in a nearby town. When the company moved more than an hour away, it seemed as if her luck had run out. But she soon hooked up with Shore.Net, where she works in the sales-administration department. Tricia "Twisha" Wishart, 35, also a mother of two, had worked in a local bank for 15 years while taking computer-science classes part-time at a community college. Now she helps Shore.Net business customers with their high-speed access.
Then there's Doc PC, a bushy-bearded, kinetic 58-year-old who is the company's self-proclaimed "token biker." Doc PC -- he swears he hasn't used his given name in years -- was a consultant at a company in a nearby town. He became such an ardent and productive recommender of Shore.Net to his clients that Gray started paying him a commission and eventually hired him. The good doctor ultimately worked himself up to the position of network-operations team leader. Along the way he found Shore.Net's growing relationship with Lynn so resonant that he moved there and is fixing up a house just blocks away from the company. "Lynn was going the way of a lot of industrial towns -- it was a place to stay out of," he says. "I wanted to be part of the turnaround."
