A small business in Newark is the first to receive a below-market-rate loan from New Castle County as part of Grow NCC.
On the Mark Locators in Newark provides industrial, commercial, and residential utility locating services for gas, electric, communications, fiber optics, sewer lines, and other miscellaneous utility lines. On the Mark Locators uses electro-magnetic scanning to find metal utility piping and ground-penetrating radar for other utilities like PVC pipes and fiber optic lines.
Its owner Tyese Gillespie says she and her husband Chad, who is the project manager, worked in utilities for several years before starting up their own business in 2016.
“We sat around the table and we kept saying, ‘There is a safer way to do this process.,'" Tyese says. "There is more equipment out there that can be used to make sure that facilities don’t get damaged.”
The $225,000 loan to the company is allowing them to hire more employees, purchase more tech -- and helped them secure a contract with Exelon to locate its electric facilities and respond to their 8-1-1 calls. Chad Gillespie is project manager and says they wouldn’t have been able to go after that without the loan.
“It allowed us to be in this position to where we can grow and we can upscale our employees and be able to get to the capacity where we need to be able to manage that," Chad says. "It’s going to be constant growth after this taking on that type of project for Exelon.”
Tyese says they are repaying the county with a 5.34 percent interest rate when other loan companies are charging as much as 30 percent.
County Executive Matt Meyer says growing small business means growing jobs.
“The more we can accelerate job growth, quality job growth for a great family-owned firm like this, it’s fantastic. The more we can also connect companies like this. They’re able to get a big contract with Exelon, and once they do one contract with Exelon, the sky is the limit.”
The loan program is a collaboration between New Castle County, County Council, Discover Bank and The Grow America Fund and offers below-market rate loans to established businesses looking to grow.
NCC Grows is accepting applications on a revolving basis – the fund has a total of $5 million with about $1 million in county funds, which the county hopes to increase in future budgets.
