This year FDDC offered five – $1,000 scholarships to students pursuing a post-secondary degree in a business/finance related field. Congratulations to these award winners who are being recognized for their hard work and determination! FDDC wishes them continued success in their future careers.
With an interest in serving their friends and neighbors, Kyle Waliezer and Jeff Halme decided to build a new convenience store and gas station, while capitalizing on the increased truck traffic in the Lake Norden area. The location carries a history of providing fuel and other services to U.S. Highway 81 traffic that dates back to 1936. Moving to the site when the highway was re-routed, the original station was built by Al and Emily Flakus and was called Alsville Service and Garage, Café and Modern Cabins. The Flakus family ran the business for 36 years and after other owners took over, the business eventually dissolved. With the historic name of “Alsville”, Waliezer and Halme opted to add “Crossing”, with the business now being known as Alsville Crossing.
SBA 504 financing through FDDC is a perfect choice for a wide variety of projects – no one size, one color, or one pattern fits all here! FDDC is able to spot deals that may have several quirks to them and work their way through the maze to get to the end result – a financed project.
The SBA 504 program is a business economic development loan program. SBA has defined a number of economic development criteria a small business applicant can meet in order to be eligible for 504 financing. One of these criteria, job creation and retention, has recently been changed by SBA… making it even easier for small businesses to be eligible for 504 financing.
The new law raises the SBA 504 appraisal threshold to match the federal banking regulator threshold, which is currently $500,000.
On December 11, 2018, First District Development Company (FDDC) hosted their Annual Celebration in conjunction with recognizing their 35th year anniversary of originating loans. Also, Jennifer Olson with MetaBank in Brookings, SD, was awarded with FDDC’s 2018 Lender of the Year Award.
Shelby Kraemer joined the FDDC team in December of 2018 as a Loan Officer.
Shelby received her Bachelor of Business Administration with a major in Finance from the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, South Dakota. Before coming to FDDC, she worked for the Federal Government, assisting small businesses, banks, and public entities with loans and grants.
The White House cabinet member and head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, Linda McMahon, visited FDDC/SBA’s client as part of her national Ignite Tour. DeGeest Steel Works was the first business she visited as part of her first trip to South Dakota.
Physical Therapists, Wade Fligge and Trisha Rieffenberger, who were former tenants are now proud commercial real estate owners. By utilizing the dual loan structure of a conventional loan through Reliabank in Watertown and an SBA 504 loan through FDDC, Wade and Trisha were able to lock in a stabilized debt repayment in their quest to convert from renting to owning their current location.
The SBA continues to be shutdown as part of the larger, partial Federal government shutdown due to a lapse in appropriations. Only SBA employees deemed “essential” report for work on limited capacities.
