Funding the Dream: Louis Argento on What It Actually Takes to Get a Small Business Off the Ground in West Virginia

Most conversations about the outdoor economy in West Virginia focus on the trails, the rivers, the terrain. Fewer focus on the part that makes any of it sustainable as a business — the capital. That’s where Louis Argento comes in.

Louis is a loan-readiness specialist with Partner Community Capital, a CDFI — Community Development Financial Institution — based in West Virginia. CDFIs exist specifically to get capital into communities and businesses that traditional banks won’t touch: startups, nonprofits, rural Main Street businesses, and the kinds of small outdoor operations that are building the recreation economy one outfitter, one trailhead business, one guide service at a time. PCAP lends up to about $1.5 million, but its real value for many clients is what happens before the loan — the business plan development, the financial projection work, the hand-holding through a process most people have never navigated.

Louis came to the work with more context than most. He grew up in Fayette County, near the upper Kanawha Valley, in a family that ran Angelo’s Market for 80 years — an Italian immigrant story that started with his grandfather working the coal mines and saving enough to open a corner store. He watched his parents navigate the pressures of small business ownership in a small West Virginia town, and he carried that perspective through nearly two decades in commercial banking before landing at PCAP. The difference, he says, is the relationship. Banking was transactional. This is not.

One of the programs he spent the past three years running was PCAP’s Recreation Economies Initiative — a partnership with the WV Department of Tourism, the Hatfield-McCoy Trails Authority, Woodlands Community Lenders, and other partners — that provided free advisory services and technical assistance grants to outdoor businesses and nonprofits across the state. Among the projects it touched: engineering costs for a lighting system at a local bike park, and a feasibility study for a trail around Summersville Lake that would connect to both the new Summersville Lake State Park and downtown Summersville. That study is now a tool in hand for advocates pursuing the next round of construction funding. That’s how it works — concept to document to dollars, one step at a time.

Louis was the first guest on the Access Appalachia podcast. Listen to the full conversation at the link above, or wherever you stream podcasts.