Since 1983, the East Texas Regional Development Company has provided small businesses in Texas with the financing they needed to expand or even start their business. A few of these businesses are profiled below.
Beacon Hospice - Longview, Texas
Beacon Hospice & Beacon Hospice Inpatient Facility is a 16 bed inpatient and outpatient facility for the terminally ill located on Gilmer Road in Longview, Texas. This unique community development project serves as Longview’s first inpatient hospice facility. It is designed to feel more like a home with every room being private and includes its own patio. Families, friends, and patients have access to a chapel, meditation room, large living room with stone fireplace, children’s play area, covered back deck, conference room, library, computer area, gazebo and serenity garden.
Beacon Hospice is a locally owned and operated hospice which serves the Northeast Texas counties of Camp, Cass, Gregg, Harrison, Henderson, Hopkins, Marion, Morris, Panola, Rains, Rusk, Smith, Titus, Upshur, Van Zandt and Wood. Beacon Hospice is a family of professionals who are passionate believers in the hospice concept. It utilizes a broad spectrum of specialists, including physicians and nurses specifically trained in hospice care. With such diversity of experiences, Beacon Hospice is able to make sure patients get the very best in palliative care and symptom management.
Product Concept Development - Palestine, Texas
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Product Concept Development (PCD) specializes in industrial design. PCD takes product ideas and helps turn them into reality through their trademarked “Recombinante Technologies” process. |
| Essentially this is a way to take multiple technologies and recombine them to make a product work. PCD has worked with some major corporations and has even done some defense work. While Mr. Rainone cannot go into a lot of detail regarding some of his major clients, they have worked with some Fortune 500 companies. PCD does not specialize by focusing on one industry or group of clients. “We like to work in different industries. It keeps us fresh and on our toes. Engineers, especially, tend to get compartmentalized and don’t think real creatively. Here, we value creativity.” |
Not only is PCD interested in making money, but they are also concerned about the local community. “We see what the community is like around here and we would like to see it improve, because we like it here and we want to see this region prosper. One of our dreams is to spin off businesses.” As PCD continues to develop products, those products can be the foundation of a new business that could locate in East Texas. “When we began looking for land, we star ted northwest of Ft. Worth and it was either too urban or too expensive. We star ted looking out east and received a very generous offer from the Palestine Economic Development Corporation and the East Texas Regional Development Company. They put together half a million dollars of seed money to get us here and the ETRDC helped secure money for our lab building.”
Splash Kingdom - Canton, Texas
| The City of Canton now has even more reasons to be proud. With the help of the ETRDC, three new business have been opened in Canton over the past four years which currently has created over sixty new jobs within the City in addition to increasing the tax base for the community. The newest addition to the community is Splash Kingdom Waterpark located along I-20. The city is centrally located for the targeted East Texas market, and Canton’s willingness to work with new businesses made it an ideal location for Splash Kingdom. |
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| Johnny and Marci Blevins opened the water park officially in 2006 and closed the loan with the ETRDC in March of 2007. The facility has attracted over 80,000 visitors during its first official year of operations. The waterpark and its slide, wave pool and lazy rivers is open from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Year round entertainment is provided with and indoor mini-golf course, arcade and birthday party room. |
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