Elmwood is planning to close that location February 15th. The Peoria County Board approved loaning Hick’ry Stick $88,000 two years ago to help expand. That was after some board members expressed concern that there wasn’t enough financial information presented before lending the money. Mark Rothert is Assistant Peoria County Administrator for Economic Development. He says the County has made changes to how it loans money since that time:
“We’ve added more processes to it to allow for greater due diligence. Instituting a loan committee, a full application process that you would submit to any local lender. That application is then reviewed by staff and is then reviewed by the loan committee. So there are many checkpoints along the way,” Rothert says.
Rothert says the County is preparing to see how well the business can repay the remainder on the loan. He says the business has already repaid about $30,000. Rothert says Hick’ry Stick is keeping its Peoria location and restructuring to a catering-only business.