By : Steve Lawson
Source : http://www2.godanriver.com
Category : Small Business Grant
One of four grants recently awarded to Rockingham County by the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center helped one local business expand and add new jobs.
Joe Michalek opened Piedmont Distillers in downtown Madison’s historic train depot building in 2005. Michalek’s first product, Catdaddy Carolina Moonshine, took a while to catch on, but distribution soon reached coast to coast.
In 2007, Michalek partnered with racing legend Junior Johnson and began bottling the company’s second brand, Junior Johnson’s Midnight Moon, based on the Johnson family’s generations-old moonshine recipe.
“After six years, the business has really begun to take off and we just outgrew the space in the old depot building,” Michalek said. “We just couldn’t distill and bottle enough there to keep up with the demand.”
Michalek said he started looking for a larger facility to move the business into about a year ago, including several locations outside Rockingham County.
“I really hated to think about leaving the area that gave us our start, but it was beginning to look like the only possibility,” Michalek said.
That’s when he found the former auto dealership complex at 3960 U.S. 220 outside Madison. Michalek said he saw a car at the building one day, stopped by and soon realized he might have found the ideal location just a short distance from his original site.
Working with the Rockingham County Partnership for Economic Development and Tourism, Michalek began seeking grant funds to help renovate the former dealership. Partnership president Graham Pervier told him about the Rural Center grants.
Pervier said the North Carolina Rural Center has several grants tied to job creation, but one was specifically aimed at repurposing vacant buildings for business expansions that lead to new manufacturing jobs.
“I was really excited that we were able to obtain this grant for Joe and keep his business in the western Rockingham community,” Pervier said.
Michalek said he found out about two weeks ago that the county was awarded a $50,000 building reuse grant to help relocate the distillery and create five new jobs.
“We’re already planning to add at least six jobs and hope maybe to increase that to eight,” Michalek said.
Much of the work at the new location is already completed, supplies moved in and manufacturing started. Michalek said the business began distilling, bottling and packaging under a temporary permit while the county finalizes rezoning for the property.
“We’ve been very fortunate in the place we decided to start this business,” he said. “Madison was very good to us and I’m glad we could stay in the same area with this expansion. And I couldn’t have asked for anyone to be more helpful or supportive than Graham Pervier and the Partnership have been, as well as the commissioners and zoning staff. They’ve all made this transition run a lot smoother than it could have.”
The biggest change Michalek sees from the move is the ability to run the distilling and bottling ends of the business in separate areas, producing more product faster than previously possible.
“We knew we would have a lot more room for production, but I never realized how much more we could do when those two areas are able to run at the same time,” he said. “Now it seems we have to dodge forklifts constantly moving products from bottling to the warehouse to trucks. Before we’d have to move two or three things out the way with one forklift to get to the one we needed. Then we’d have to move them back when we were finished because we didn’t have extra space to store anything.”
The Rockingham County Business and Technology Center also received a Rural Center grant. The center was awarded an $11,000 supplemental business development grant to help develop a revolving loan/investment fund for county entrepreneurs.
Mark Wells, executive director of RCBTC, said he had been thinking for several months about how to create a fund to help people with good business ideas get started. Wells said the idea grew out of the Rockingham County Competitiveness Assessment completed last year by James Johnson Jr. from the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. The study was a cooperative venture between county government, the Partnership for Economic Development and the Reidsville Area Foundation.
Wells said one of the study’s primary focuses for the county’s future dealt with promoting entrepreneurship, both in education and on the practical level.
“I wanted to find a way to help finance some of these entrepreneurial ideas, the ones that had a strong business plan and chance of success in our county,” Wells said.
Wells began talking with Craig Cardwell, executive director of the Reidsville Area Foundation, about ways to fund such a dream. Wells knew one of the first steps would be to prepare a feasibility study to see if the idea would work in Rockingham County and whether it should be done as a revolving loan or an investment program for the entrepreneurs receiving funds.
He also knew that he would need the backing of someone intent on providing the necessary funds to get the program started in order to receive the grant.
“I talked with Craig and the Foundation provided a letter of intent to provide up to $500,000 to fund the program if the feasibility study indicated a positive outlook,” Wells said. “Of course, we’ll still have to compete for those funds like anyone else, but we could potentially have between $250,000 and $500,000 to start the program.”
Wells said his ideal would be to have $1 million in assets in the fund, which would mean raising another $500,000 or more from outside sources such as private investors, businesses or organizations.
“Obviously, the more funding we have available, the more ideas we can help get off the ground,” he said.
Wells said RCBTC would manage the funds and there would be a board, or “due diligence team,” to review all applications. Every application for funding would pass a rigorous examination to ensure all of the groundwork for a business plan had been completed before it was considered.
“The main purpose of the study being done with this grant is to judge the feasibility of the project and to decide whether it would move forward better as a loan or an ‘angel fund’ format,” Wells said.
With the grant awarded and the study ready to move forward, Wells said he was hopeful that the program could begin within 6 to 12 months. He said it could begin with the initial funds from Reidsville Area Foundation, if they were able to get them, and grow as other investors were located.
“This is really the kind of thing that is typically found in larger metropolitan areas, but I think it falls right in line with what we’re trying to focus on in our county – small businesses that have potential to grow and expand,” Wells said. “I think it could be a great asset for our county if we could get this started.”
The remaining two Rural Center grants recently awarded within the county went to the City of Eden and the Free Clinic of Rockingham County.
The Free Clinic of Rockingham County received a $19,450 grant from the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust. The grants are provided to help medical facilities in the state’s most economically distressed counties make improvements and purchase needed equipment.
The grant funds will be used by the clinic to renovate offices and an educational room, as well as to purchase furnishings, computers and printers.
The four grants awarded in Rockingham County were part of 84 grants totaling more than $9 million awarded by the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center. The grants were projected to create or retain 1,169 jobs and assist projects in 44 counties across the state.
Eden received a $40,000 Clean Water grant to be used toward the inspection of nearly 20,000 feet of sewer pipe. Eden is required to match the grant with an additional $50,170.
Terry Shelton, Eden’s director of environmental services, said the city is involved in a major rehabilitation project to upgrade aging sewer infrastructure and halt sewer system overflows. The Clean Water grant funds will be used to evaluate sewer lines on the Upper Matrimony Creek sewer outfall that is part of the much larger Bridge Street pump station basin.
“The grant will help cover the cost of cleaning and video camera inspection of 20,000 feet of sewer line and the engineering review and evaluation of the data generated by the inspection,” Shelton said.
The information obtained from the inspection process will be used to develop plans for repairs to the lines in the future. The engineering report can be used to verify areas in need of repair when applying for larger grant opportunities to fund major sewer system rehabilitation projects.
Source : http://www2.godanriver.com/news/2012/mar/21/business-shines-new-location-ar-1781108/#fbcomments
