What We Do
SCED facilitates business and
job growth in Northern California.
What Do We Do?
Commercial real estate loans & refinancing, business loans, and economic development planning.
Grow businesses and create jobs by loaning money to entrepreneurs
Make more financing available to our community by leveraging bank financing
Bring in outside funds and loan them to local entrepreneurs
Collaborate with and assist local cities and counties
Why Do We Do It?
Plain and simple SCED facilitates business and job growth.
When a business expands, the whole community benefits through job growth and the increased flow of capital. A growing business needs more equipment, inventory and supplies. The growing business buys from other businesses and as a result, supplier businesses grow, creating an upward spiral of growth. SCED believes the success of one leads to the success of others.
Our lending programs reduce the largest hurdle for many entrepreneurs, the down payment. By leveraging private bank money, we are able to reduce down payments and help entrepreneurs grow sooner.
SCED works to bring in federal and private loan funds to help our local businesses. The more funds we have available the more we can help entrepreneurs grow their businesses.
Whether we are working with cities and counties to obtain federal economic development funds, build new loan funds or lending our expertise to improve business activity, we do it to make our community better.
How Do We Do It?
SCED leverages public and private funds to grow the economy and catalyzes projects that respond to critical community needs.
Our SBA 504 and Business Loan Programs have loaned over $108 million dollars to grow local businesses. SBA 504 loans are funded through the sale of debentures on Wall Street bringing in millions of outside dollars to our area. SCED’s Business Loan Program is a revolving loan fund where the principal and the majority of interest stay in the program and are repeatedly re-loaned.
The SBA 504 loan program leverages private bank money to finance projects at 90% loan-to-value. Under the program, the bank contributes 50% of the total project costs and SCED though our relationship with the SBA contributes 40% of the total project costs. SCED’s Business Loan Program is considered “gap” financing where we leverage private bank financing and reduce borrower down payments.
SCED started with a $2 million loan fund from the US Economic Development Administration (EDA), $2.5 million from the US Department of Agriculture, Rural Development and $1.0 million from the US Forest Service. Recently SCED borrowed funds from a local lender establishing a $500,000 loan fund, recapitalized our EDA loan fund with $500,000 in new money, created the $70,000 SEED Fund with private money and SCED matching funds and we are in the process of jumpstarting another local loan fund.
SCED is responsible for developing a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) as part of our relationship with EDA. The CEDS guides the regional planning process and assists communities in identifying opportunities for economic growth.
SCED is working with local and regional organizations to increase the supply of fresh, heathy food and to explore aggregation and distribution networks for small farms. SCED is a catalyst for projects that respond to critical needs of the communities we serve.
In the wake of massive wildfires in Trinity County, which devastated the tourism industry for an entire season, SCED secured funding for and facilitated the creation of a county-wide tourism marketing program to stimulate recovery efforts and renew interest in Trinity County as a vacation destination.