A $500,000 loan to St. Lawrence Zinc Company near Gouverneur has been approved by a New York Power Authority-administered development fund.

The company is expected to employ more than 100 people after the mine opens later this year, a press release from NYPA Monday said.

The firm is pursuing about $15 million in long-term financing to restart operations at the mine near Gouverneur. The mine was closed in 2008. The new owners bought the mine last November.

This loan, from the North Country Economic Development Fund, is intended as a bridge until the remainder of the financing is secured.

The fund is administered by NYPA and the Development Authority of the North Country. Empire State Development and North Country Alliance representatives also serve on the NCEDF board.

NYPA is also supporting the mine with a four-megawatt, low-cost hydropower allocation, approved in December 2014, from the Preservation Power program, which supports regional businesses with low-cost hydropower from the Power Authority’s St. Lawrence-FDR hydroelectric power project in return for capital investments and jobs.

The $10 million fund was established in 2014 to provide low-cost loans to businesses expanding and creating or retaining jobs in the North Country. The fund results from a long-term power contract between NYPA and Alcoa, which has been a NYPA customer since the St. Lawrence-FDR power project in Massena went into commercial operation in 1958.

The loans are available for manufacturers, agribusiness, clean and green bio-technology firms, assemblers and wholesale distributors, warehouses to buy land, machinery and equipment, and for construction and rehabilitation. Funding is also available for business improvement districts and non-profit entities for community revitalization projects.

The fund is available to businesses in St. Lawrence, Clinton, Franklin, Essex, Jefferson, Lewis, Hamilton and Herkimer counties and enterprises within the New York boundaries of the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation.