The Associated Press

Athens – Appalachian experts say it will take more homegrown businesses like Al Sharpe’s pie-making operation to bring jobs to one of the nation’s poorest regions.

Wednesday, April 19, 2000

Athens – Appalachian experts say it will take more homegrown businesses like Al Sharpe’s pie-making operation to bring jobs to one of the nation’s poorest regions. Appalachian Regional Commission officials, bankers and others looked Tuesday for models of small business success they can build on with a $15 million development fund.

Sharpe and his wife, Loretta, have turned a hobby of selling pies at craft shows into Millie’s Munchies, which now provides baked goods to five area grocery stores and several local restaurants.

”We’d like to grow, but we don’t want to lose our homemade touch,” said Sharpe, who one day envisions owning a building that could employ several local people and maybe even a restaurant.

Sharpe and other small business owners shared their success stories Tuesday with U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, and Jesse White, co-chairman of the Appalachian Regional Commission. It was part of a meeting organized by the commission and local officials to highlight ways of encouraging entrepreneurship in Appalachia.

Each business has benefitted from the three-year effort by the commission, a federal-state effort to help development in the 13-state Appalachian region. The aim is to help communities in Appalachia start and expand local businesses.

Millie’s Munchies, for example, now rents kitchen space from the Appalachian Center for Economic Network, a non-profit operation in this city 70 miles southeast of Columbus. It also helped arrange for a loan for a new delivery truck for the Sharpes.

”We have to instill in the people of Appalachia a new way of thinking about economic development,” White said.

”Fortune 500 companies started in the garages of someone. I want to see them started in the garages of Appalachia.”

White said the new way of thinking is to no longer rely on businesses moving into the region. Instead, the emphasis is on the value of creating businesses in Appalachia and keeping the wealth there.

The business owners say success has not come easy. They complained about government red tape and a need for help in developing business plans and markets for their products, acquiring equipment and technology, and obtaining health insurance. They also complained about how difficult it can be to get money, something White acknowledged is the biggest roadblock for aspiring business owners.

But help could be on the way.

David Wilhelm is an Athens native and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

He said at a panel discussion Tuesday with White, Strickland, bankers and Ohio University officials that $10 million has been raised for a venture capital fund. That fund will help small businesses grow in Ohio’s 29 Appalachian counties. He expects the total to reach $15 million by fall.

”What we are doing is building on the individual assets of this region,” Wilhelm said of the Appalachian Ohio Development Fund. Beginning July 1, the fund will help provide money to create or expand businesses in specialty food, tourism, technology and manufacturing.

Ohio University is providing $2 million for the fund, which also is being supported by many of Ohio’s key banks and financial institutions.

The fund will provide between $200,000 and $2 million to small businesses in return for partial ownership of the companies. The fund will make money for its investors when the business owners eventually obtain new financing for their growing companies.

Wilhelm said the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s trips to Appalachia in 1998 highlighted the need for business investments in a region that Jackson has claimed has been left behind the nation’s growth.

Strickland said the region, which has some of the highest unemployment rates in the state, sorely needs the money.

”We have lots of problems, but we have no problems that we can’t overcome.”