The Small Business Assistance Corporation of Savannah honored a rural doctor and two others on Tuesday at its annual luncheon and awards ceremony.
Dr. Habigaile Cribe accepted the 2013 Michael Bunn Sr. Memorial Rising Star Award for her work serving low-income patients in McRae, Telfair County, an area the Georgia State Office of Rural Health has designated as medically underserved.
In 2011, Cribe sought help from the SBAC to purchase and renovate a building to serve as a primary care center. Cribe said after the hospital closed several years ago, many patients had to travel 20 miles or more to seek medical care. Telfair County, she noted, has a population of about 16,000 and an unemployment rate of 14.6 percent.
The SBAC, along with the city of McRae and Merchant & Citizens Bank, contributed $474,000 in financing for the facility, called the Telfair Medical Center.
Cribe said the center now has a full-time pediatrician and a cardiologist and general surgeon who pay regular visits.
“For the community, it’s been good, and it’s had a financial impact,” said Cribe, who’s practiced internal medicine for 11 years in McRae. She noted that kids no longer have to go to the hospital if they are sick.
“Our goal is to bring in as much specialty care as we can,” Cribe told the crowd of about 140 people at Savannah Station reception hall. “Thanks to the SBAC for helping me achieve my vision.”
The SBAC also awarded its Small Business Lender of the Year Award to Ryan Martin, commercial banker and vice president of Sea Island Bank, for being first in the number of SBAC-financed loans in the last fiscal year. Martin used four programs to book six loans totaling $2,016,000 for his clients.
“I’m blessed to work with great teams at the SBAC and Sea Island Bank. Everyone has gone above and beyond to serve some great clients,” said Martin.
SBAC loans have helped create jobs, fund facility expansions and buy new equipment for businesses, he said.
Gloria Pace, an administrative assistant at Savannah College of Art and Design, received the T. McCoy Cornerstone Award for administrative professionals.
The outgoing board of the SBAC was acknowledged and a new board of directors for 2014 was nominated and approved.
SBAC’s retiring board chairman, Tom Butler, spoke of the work the group had accomplished in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
“(We) put in process, approved and funded loans totaling $15 million for projects totaling $37.6 million in our communities,” said Butler, adding that those projects had created more than 800 jobs.
He said the loans went to startups, expansions, urban, rural, minority, women-owned and veteran-owned businesses.
Butler said the SBAC had also recently been named by the Treasury Department as a Community Development Financial Institution, or CDFI, a designation that took two years to achieve. It allows the SBAC to draw federal money, as well as offer specialty tax credits to investors financing development projects in distressed areas.
“The point I want to drive home is, ‘Can commercial lending be creative and prudent at the same time?’ Yes it can,” said Butler.
The SBAC, founded in 1989, is a nonprofit organization licensed by the U.S. Small Business Administration and supported by the city of Savannah that promotes economic development through loan programs.