PIDC drives economic growth for small and midsize businesses

During the economic downturn in 2009, when Pete Rose was laid off of his advertising job (not that Pete Rose), he decided to turn his side passion of home renovation into a handyman services company. His passion grew into what is now the Home Hero, a handyman services business located in the heart of Philadelphia.

His motto of “no job is too small” and mission of reliability, timeliness, and trustworthiness grew his business into the success it is today — completing more than 900 handy jobs per year with high customer service satisfaction.

As a small business, Home Hero struggled to find a bank that would provide them the loans that they needed to continue their growth rate of 50 percent per year. That’s where the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) came in.

PIDC is the city’s public-private economic development corporation and was founded in 1958 by the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia and the City of Philadelphia. PIDC gave Home Hero the funds they needed to market their services to a larger audience and expose them to other business resources to help further grow their enterprise.

Recently, Home Hero was the recipient of the Customer Service of the Year Award of the Chamber’s annual Excellence Awards. The Excellence Awards recognize companies that have demonstrated unique vision, innovation and achievement in support of our region’s economy. This year, the Customer Service award was sponsored by PIDC.

Since its inception, PIDC has helped provided thousands of businesses with a leg up for small businesses and nonprofits alike throughout the City of Philadelphia. PIDC is involved in numerous projects and activities that drive this growth, including:

• The lending of $27 million of capital to 85 small and growing businesses in 2015;
• The creation and retention of 23,000 Philadelphia-based jobs over a total of 210 transactions in 2015;
• The settlement of over 6,700 transactions and investing a total of $23 billion in projects since its inception.

PIDC is also responsible for the success of numerous large scale projects in Philadelphia, one of the largest being the Navy Yard, which contains more than 150 companies and is home to over 12,000 employees. PIDC, the master developer of the project, has secured a total of $1 billion of public and private investment into this successful urban redevelopment.

The Chamber is proud to have its roots in partnership with the City of Philadelphia in such a successful organization that is driving growth throughout the city. To learn more about PIDC and how it can help your organization grow, visit pidcphila.com.

Rob Wonderling is president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia.