Waynesboro’s proximity to Skyline Drive, the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Appalachian Trail makes it a perfect place for hiking, biking, paddling and fly fishing in the great outdoors. It’s also a terrific location for adventures in your own backyard with a little help from Brian and Victoria Mininger. 

“At Bear Creek Outdoor Living, we design, build and furnish spaces to help people get outside in daily life,” said Brian. “I was born and raised in Waynesboro and have lived here the majority of my life, so it was pretty important for us to keep the business here."

Victoria founded Bear Creek Enterprises in 2016 to offer construction cleaning for local commercial contractors and has seen the enterprise evolve into a company that specializes in unique backyard designs. While she still owns the business, the couple now works together and have expanded their market to outdoor furnishings and garden spaces.

The picture was quite different when they got a 2019 EDA loan to acquire inventory to grow the business. The couple was active in the Greater Augusta Regional Chamber of Commerce and downtown merchants’ group but hadn’t really considered tapping that resource until they had a specific application for the funds.

“All the traditional banks want real estate capital if they're going to loan anything for a small business,” said Mininger. “At that point, we were still a young company and didn't have a lot of resources. So, the fact that this loan program didn't rake us over the coals with interest or require real estate collateral made it very attractive.

“The low interest was also a big draw. It wasn’t quite free money but pretty close. I liked the scale of the projects too. You don't have companies coming in and gobbling up the money at $100,000 or $200,000 a pop.”

The Miningers moved into a large building on Port Republic Road during the COVID pandemic expecting to fill the space, but life had other plans. Some of the growth curves in their business sector leveled off, leaving them with a facility well beyond what they needed or could afford.

The Waynesboro EDA was there to help as they started exploring options for rightsizing operations and offered a streamlined process to make financing more accessible to new and existing enterprises. 

“The application has gotten shorter over time,” said Director of Economic Development & Tourism Greg Hitchin. “We used to ask for about three years of tax returns and reports on everybody who ever touched the business but found that we weren’t even looking at a half of that stuff.

“Now, we're dealing more with the person and the basic information on small town businesses. We have a three-year payment schedule that’s around $400 a month. During COVID, we just stopped taking payments. I think we did two or three months of no payments.”

“The repayment was very manageable,” added Brian. “I liked that and the fact that the decision is local too. When you talk to a bank, you don’t often deal with anyone in close proximity to your location.”

Bear Creek Outdoor Living has now moved the showroom to the Metalcrafters Marketplace and transitioned the construction operation to an old corduroy factory now known as the Mill at South River. Mininger likes the flexibility and ample options for affordable space in Waynesboro.

“We feel like our move will actually get us into a better financial position for growth because the facility is meeting our needs,” said Brian. “When you have a standalone facility, it's all or nothing. At the Mill, we can use what we need and expand as the business grows without having to pay for the space in the interim.”

That’s good news for Hitchin and the Waynesboro EDA, which remains on the job to help keep local businesses engaged and interested in collaborating to promote the city and all it has to offer. The downtown area is bustling with activity and parking spaces can be hard to find in the evenings.

“We moved to Nelson County in 2008 and lived there for about six years,” said Mininger. “I noticed a big transformation by moving away and coming back. A lot of the storefronts are now full. It's vibrant and I think it’s a great place for our employees to live too."