When you locate your data center or manufacturing plant in a rural area, the community you join is filled with a small population of good people—and little else. You have to import most of your labor. They arrive and find a ghost town. Buildings dilapidated; leisure options nonexistent. It’s difficult for your construction team to find appropriate short-term housing or even a spot to get a cold beer after a long, hard day’s work. 

In a few years, your permanent team will arrive. They’ll lament the absence of specialty grocers like the Fresh Market, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods and try to learn to

make do with the fare available at Walmart and Piggly Wiggly. 

These workers you relocated from established towns and cities will yearn for a spa day, a proper fitness center with yoga and pilates classes, someplace to go on date night. They’ll want to spend Sundays sipping a cocktail by a resort pool. And when they can’t do these things, they will itch to return to civilization.

The local community is part of the employee experience you deliver to your workforce. Transplants who long to return to normal are a retention risk. 

The Fund is led by professionals who have lived in rural America as well as in college towns and major U.S. cities. We’ve also traveled the globe. So, we know what’s available and what’s missing.

Still, we don’t assume that every small town is the same. Rather, we immerse ourselves in each community in which we invest. 

To ensure that each of our projects solves a pain point for the community, we learn which businesses natives will support. We also know how to deliver upmarket offerings at the appropriate size to meet demand.

We develop the projects and operate them ourselves, profitably. That way you can focus on your business rather than trying to operate entertainment, hospitality, grocery, and fitness businesses at a loss to retain your staff. Because learning ancillary industries isn’t a cost of doing business. It’s money misspent.

The commercial property you own is pretty run down. It hasn’t been in use for many years. While it doesn’t cost you much to hold the property, a big company came to town bringing new potential customers. You don’t want to miss out on the money that everyone else seems to be cashing in on. 

You want to launch a business. But rehabbing a neglected

building is a huge undertaking. You need money. You have no experience raising capital or developing real estate. So, a bank may not want to take a chance on giving you a construction loan. That means you’d have to put the money out upfront.

You heard about tax credits. But they don’t give you the tax credit money upfront, either, and the time, expertise and paperwork to qualify for tax credits and find someone to use them seems like a full-time job.

You’re older now than you were when you acquired the property. Plus, your kids have moved away and won’t be of much help even though they stand to benefit from the project.

You’re smart enough to know that part of something is better than 100% of nothing.

The Rural Fund provides financing and development and operational services to commercial property owners like you. Whether you have a complete business plan to launch a specific business or you just have a qualifying commercial property you want to monetize, we may be able to help.