Good News Regarding Our Certification Pursuit

Dear friends:

Five years ago, we made an organizational commitment to become a certified Area Loan Organization (ALO) and Industrial Development Corporation (IDC). This commitment was an extension of our pledge to fully serve the residents and businesses of Cumberland County. A few months ago, we decided to apply to become a certified lender under those designations and worked with our stakeholders to submit an effective application with the PA Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED). Becoming a certified lender would grant Cumberland County Economic Development (CCED) access to Small Business First (SBF) and PIDA loans.  These programs offer low interest financing to businesses and target a variety of industries including manufacturing and hospitality. By adding our organization as an additional provider of the aforementioned programs, greater lending capacity would be achieved and businesses would benefit from a healthier level of competition resulting in improved service, better performance, and more competitive pricing.
Last week, with the participation of our legislative delegation and Carlisle Mayor Kirk Wilson, CCED had a very positive meeting with Governor Edward G. Rendell and the Secretary of DCED, George Cornelius. Our Governor and Secretary were impressed with the amount of garnered grassroots support for our application and agreed to work with CCED to award these designations.
The Central Penn Business Journal broke the story, which was confirmed by DCED. CCED wants to be respectful of the certification process and of DCED’s practices and prefers not to comment further until the full certification process has been finalized. Once the process has been finalized, we will be sharing with you more details about our plan to become the top County in terms of number of projects and amount of lending generated under those programs. To our scores of supporters including the West Shore Chamber of Commerce, Greater Carlisle Area Chamber of Commerce, Shippensburg Area Chamber of Commerce, Mechanicsburg Chamber of Commerce, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; local and federal Cumberland County legislators; Cumberland County Government including the Board of County Commissioners, the County Planning Commission, the Redevelopment Authority, the Cumberland County Controller; Municipal Governments; regional economic development service providers; and  scores of local businesses; we will always be eternally grateful for your support and vow not to let you down.
CCED is already a successful and experienced economic development lender that has already done millions of dollars in affordable business financing and is looking forward to using these additional new tools to create greater economic development opportunities. Without a doubt, this is great news for our County and business community. Achieving these designations is critical to the economic development efforts of Cumberland County, and we look forward to partnering with DCED and current provider – CREDC – to offer the very best to the Cumberland County business community.

Best regards,

Omar A. Shute
Executive Director
Cumberland Area EDC