Estill Development Alliance

EKU BUSINESS INCUBATOR SUPPORTS
LOCAL ENTREPRENEURS STRIVING TO GROW BUSINESSES
RICHMOND, Ky. – Tucked quietly away in a corner of Eastern Kentucky University’s Business and Technology Center are several rather non-descript small offices.
But it’s home to four area entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of a smorgasbord of services available through the Center for Economic Development, Entrepreneurship and Technology at EKU to grow their fledgling businesses.
The four entrepreneurs include an EKU student and faculty member, some recent graduates from the University, and a local resident. Their products and services run the gamut: computer software, forest-based beekeeping and honey production, an online conduit for buying and selling surplus and salvage building materials, and creative services such as graphic design and photography.
CEDET houses the Eastern Region Innovation and Commercialization Center (ICC), a Small Business Development Center and Entrepreneur Services. It also houses office space for clients of the ICC Business Accelerator, more commonly known as an incubator.
“We have a distinct advantage in that we can leverage all our programs, services and individual expertise to help our clients grow their businesses and reach their goals,” said CEDET Director Ian Mooers. “Also, because we’re located at a university, already we’re seeing our clients work with faculty and students on class projects.”
Gary Marshall, who serves as executive director of the Eastern Region ICC and director of the Business and Technology Accelerator, said his role is to “support, mentor, and provide access to programs, partners, service providers and funding resources. Because of the accessibility to EKU faculty together with the expertise and services offered (by others within CEDET), we believe these clients will have the advantage of the best one-stop location to facilitate successful business start-up and growth to beat the odds of the typical start-up and contribute to local economic development.”
As director of the SBDC, Michael Rodriguez assists incubator clients with business plans, marketing plans, marketing research and industry analysis. “The SBDC is also available to provide lender loan packaging assistance if the incubator tenants have a need for funding and is able to assist with the refinement of their business plans as well as development of financial projections and completion of financial statements and other documentation needed by a commercial lender.”
Kristel Smith, director of entrepreneur services, works with each of the clients to “help them develop their business growth strategy, innovative direction, or technological capacity through coaching, mentoring, training or other support or assistance.”
CEDET staff members meet with the incubator clients at least once a month.
Current clients are:
• Software Masters, Ken Jensen, Richmond, owner. Jensen began writing computer software programs many years ago, mostly database-related applications. More recently, his focus has shifted to providing database-driven functionality behind the scenes of graphically appealing websites that others had created. “However, as a subcontractor in a struggling economy, I am dependent on the availability of work that others generate, not a good business model.” To achieve more self-sufficiency, Jensen created several websites to generate a more solid income, including PostAnEvent.com, TheLatestInformation.com, MasterWeddingPlanner.com, and MathforPrizes.com. “My biggest shortcoming is my lack of marketing experience, to be able to take these websites from a finished product to a successful revenue source. And I was at that stage when I heard about the incubator program. What they do is bring knowledge, experience and resources to the table (and) provide a very effective sounding board for my ideas, and offer suggestions for further thought and consideration. They are sort of like the GPS in your car. They don’t drive the car but, as you travel through the territory, they provide valuable guidance in getting you to your destination. Hopefully, I’ll be able to reduce the ‘recalculating.’” To learn more about Software Masters, visit SoftwareMasters.com.
• Contractor Yard Sale, Andrew Pennington, EKU student from Corbin. The business is an online classifieds service for the buying and selling of surplus and salvage building materials. “Right now the web page (www.contractoryardsale.com) just offers a basic classifieds service for contractors or building materials suppliers to list their items for sale, and consumers can pick them up for a huge discount. I have big dreams for Contractor Yard Sale,” said the 21-year-old Pennington, “not only as a webpage, but as an actual company. Being housed in the CEDET business incubator has really put me next door to a lot of folks who have a priceless set of skills when it comes to entrepreneurship. I can look to them for real, practical advice. Where else, as a business person, can I walk across the hall and talk to a business plan expert, shoot next door and talk with someone about funding, and then meet weekly with all the other staff?”
• CCB Designz, Mackenzie Crump, Jonathan Croley and Dedra Brandenburg, Richmond, owners. Three EKU graduates came together to provide several services: web development, logo design and other graphic work; photography (personal or event) such as weddings, portraits or business; and videography that includes filming, editing and converting photographs into movies. “Being able to talk with and pick the brains of people who have already gone through the start-up process helped us to avoid making some of the beginner mistakes. They also helped us with our LLC papers and to find liability insurance. All three of us would like to see CCB (ccbdesignz.com) turn into a full-time job that pays the bills and then some. We want to grow enough to have employees but also keep up our work with other new and starting businesses.” Croley and Brandenburg are nearing completion of a MBA degree at Eastern.
• Coal Country Beeworks, Dr. Tammy Horn, EKU faculty member. “A diverse economy depends upon a diverse landscape,” Horn noted, “and Coal Country Beeworks (www.eri.eku.edu/honey.php) works with surface mine companies to reclaim sites with pollinator habitat and offers beekeeping workshops to local citizens to teach, to beautify, and to diversify the Appalachian environment. Foret-based beekeeping can be a tiger with five different economic ‘tails’: honey production, wax production, queen production, pollination and extension. My hopes are to be able to work with surface mine companies to create honey corridors that will support a bee industry using Kentucky agricultural networks.” Horn said CEDET “has provided me a quiet place to write and edit my second book, provided the computer technology to finish it, and provided the mentoring to finish procrastinated business proposals and other necessary paperwork associated with starting a commercial business.”
For more information about CEDET services, call 859-622-2334 or visit www.cedet.eku.edu.

by Ralph Barnes
reprinted by permission
Original Site

The William’s Bank Building Story

by Ralph Barnes

Citizen Voice & Times

May 8, 1997

Among the more prominent structures in downtown Irvine is the imposing building on the corner of Main Street and Broadway known as the Williams Bank Building. As the name implies, the building was constructed to house a bank. The structure still carries that designation even though no bank has occupied the spot for sixty-seven years. The man for whom the building was named, W.T.B. Williams, was a leading Irvine businessman around the turn of the century. Williams was a self-made man who amassed a fortune through real estate ventures and farming. His parents moved to West Irvine from Clark County, when he was a boy. Williams married Katherine “Kitty” White, daughter of Daniel and Ruthy Henry White, in 1859. The Whites, a prominent West Irvine family, operated the West Irvine ferry for many years. That union produced a son and two daughters; Mattie, Etta and Thomas. After Katherine died in 1872, Williams married Elizabeth Hamilton, daughter of Alex Hamilton. Elizabeth bore him two sons and a daughter; William Price., George B. and Myrtle.

The Estill County Deposit Bank, chartered in 1894 and believed to be Irvine’s first bank, went into receivership shortly after the turn of the century. Williams and his eldest son, Thomas, assumed responsibility for the troubled institution and changed the name to the W.T.B. Williams Bank. The two younger sons, William P. and George B. Williams, also held positions in the new bank. All owned handsome residences in Irvine. The first Williams Bank was located in a frame house on Main Street. The small bank proved to be very successful and at one time was the second highest ranked bank in the United States with a deposits to capital stock ratio of seventeen to one.

The success of the Williams Bank did not go unnoticed and eventually the Farmers Bank and Trust Company was chartered by a group of Irvine businessmen. When the new institution opened, Irvine became a two-bank town. The officers in the new Farmers Bank were: E. Conroy, S. B. Kelly, J. A. Wallace, V.M. Gains, Tracy Wallace and A. M. Durbin. Eventually, in response to the spectacular growth of the new town, a bank also opened in Ravenna.

When the elder Williams died of injuries sustained in a fall from a horse, Thomas Williams assumed control of the institution. After only a brief stint as bank president, Thomas died suddenly in 1909. Upon his death, his brother, George B. Williams assumed the presidency of the bank. Under George’s administration the bank continued to expand, quadrupling its assets in just a few years. The community also was growing at a phenomenal rate during the same period, due to the coming of the railroad and the oil boom. The bank’s increased assets reflected that growth.

George Williams was a successful entrepreneur in several enterprises. It was only natural that he should try wildcatting when the oil boom arrived. Anticipating the money to be made in the oil business, he got out early and signed leases for the mineral rights on hundreds of acres of potential oil land. In order to create a boom atmosphere, the banker gave leases to small under-funded wildcatters knowing that any successful oil strike would be a financial boon to him. Williams was among the earliest wildcatters to drill for oil and brought in his first well in May of 1914.

When the big strikes began, Williams sold part of his holdings to the Security Producing and Refining Company, a subsidiary of the Oklahoma-Kentucky Oil Company. In the deal, he received one and one half million dollars evenly divided between cash and stocks for part of his oil holdings. Although smaller than Standard Oil, the company was large by Irvine’s standards with assets of nearly four million dollars. John Ringling, owner of Ringling Brothers Circus, was on the board of directors. The company was headquartered in the Williams Building and George Williams served as President. Williams was already wealthy when the oil boom hit and the money he earned in the oil business elevated his financial worth considerably. In fact, he and his brothers probably were the wealthiest family in the county during that era.

Construction on more spacious quarters to accommodate a growing business, and to outstrip the competing banks, began in 1916. The plans called for a three-story building sixty feet deep and sixty-three feet wide with construction costs of thirty thousand dollars. Ironically, just a few weeks before the project was completed the old frame structure burned to the ground. The bank was forced to take up temporary quarters above D. A. and J. A. Wallace’s clothing store until the new building was ready.

Construction was completed in March of 1917 and a grand opening was held in the middle of a major snow storm. N. B. Turpin, building contractor from Richmond, had the contract for erecting the building. Turpin, a former County Judge in Madison County, also built the River View Hotel and several of the larger residences on Main Street. The spacious new structure was the most modern building in Irvine, containing its own power, water and sewer systems. Electricity was generated by steam engine in the basement. The bank shared the bottom floor with the Irvine Post Office and a drug store. The pharmacy was operated by the Rowland brothers, who had just moved to town.

In addition to the three commercial concerns housed on the ground floor, the upper floors contained twenty-seven offices. Among the occupants of the upstairs offices, on opening day, was a bright young graduate of Washington and Lee Law School, Hunter Shumate. Hunter was to become one of the county’s leading attorneys in the coming decades. Even at that early date the paper surmised that the young lawyer would have a successful career. Two of Irvine’s more established attorneys, Robert Friend and Hugh Riddle, also had their offices in the new building. Several offices of oil companies were located in the new Williams building. Clyde and V. M. Gains had the offices for their oil company in one of the upstairs rooms. Coleman Benton, field manager for the Van Oil Company also was in an upstairs office.

When the Great Depression hit in 1929, the Irvine banks were caught up in the same financial calamity that devastated scores of banks throughout the country. The reorganization of the existing financial institutions into a single bank probably was the only option for survival. The Williams bank merged with the Farmers Bank and the Ravenna State Bank in 1929 to form the Union Bank and Trust Company. The new bank located on its present site at the corner of Broadway and Back Street. Officers in the new bank were: O.W. Witt, A.M. Clark, Herbert Henderson, H.P. Moore (Moore had been cashier at the Ravenna State Bank before the merger), G. Hackworth, Hunter Shumate, Robert Bergman and Dr. B. S. Braddus. No member of the Williams family held offices in the reorganized bank. Apparently, all of the W. T. B. Williams clan left Irvine, leaving only the stately edifice on the corner of Main and Broadway to mark their passing. William P. Williams, the last cashier of the William’s Bank and the last surviving male of the family died in Huntington, West Virginia in 1936 leaving no descendants.

Several commercial enterprises have occupied the Williams building since the bank moved out. Tenants included: Irvine Telephone Company, Estill Insurance Agency (owned by Elbert Smithers and Q.C. Davis) Kentucky Utilities, Bite-Rite I5 Cent Hamburgers and Ray Webb’s Jewelry. The building again came under the ownership of a Williams when local realtor Billy “Red” Williams purchased it, about ten years ago. Williams and his wife Linda, have converted the ground floor into a restaurant. Red says that much to his regret, he cannot claim kin to the wealthy Williams bankers. Contrary to any rumors that might be circulating, the present owner has no plans for changing his first name to W.T.B. and opening a bank on the site.

Addendum by Joe Crawford: As of March 2011, the building is owned by local attorney Rodney Davis and is the home of Davis Law, PSC and the Estill County Attorney’s office.

New Chamber member Discount Tobacco is holding a ribbon cutting at their new second location, Discount Tobacco #2, next Friday, March 11 at 4PM.  The new location is in the former Tobacco Barn/Kwik Draw building on River Drive.  Make sure to come out for this event and see what Owen Barker and his staff have done to roll out this new location!

An Egg-citing Class is being held at Silo Mill Gift Shop Monday March 14 and 28 @5:30pm. Hop on over and decorate an egg for your favorite “chick” !!!! Hope to see you there :0) If you have any questions, please call 606-723-7456.

3G Mobile internet has come to Irvine! Appalachian Wirelesswent live with 3G internet coverage for their customers in and around Irvine late last week. The blazing fast speeds are available when you are using their service from the Estill County Emergency Management tower behind the Emergency Operations Center on Broadway. Appalachian customers, if you haven’t checked the internet speed on your phone, do so now! You’ll know you’re on 3G when the “1x” changes to EV-DO on your phone display.

On February 11th, the Estill County Chamber of Commerce held their quarterly luncheon at Citizens Guaranty Bank, with catering by Mary Ann Willis of Sugar & Spice.  The event was sponsored by Appalachian Wireless and the business of the quarter, voted on by the membership, was the Irvine-Ravenna Woman’s Club.  It was a successful event, and thanks to everyone who had a part in making it happen! Photos courtesy of Pam Hedge of All Things Country.

Check out the two videos below of two of our Estill County businesses who were finalists for the 2010 Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards!