Mill Creek’s Post

Transcript

When we got into gaming in the 80s, that was the first economic development opportunity that worked for our community. It brought jobs, it brought revenue, and we were able to go from dirt roads to having paved roads to having facilities that can serve our community. We've invested a lot in education, so we've sent a lot of tribal citizens to college. They're not all only interested in gaming. They want to do other things, so one of the opportunities our company brings is job. So we wanted to attract our citizens, to stay within the community, to live there and be able to work in construction, be able to work in healthcare, be able to work in whatever other industry we can kind of dream of. Prairie Band, LLC was created on paper in 2010, and then in 2011 it got its first employee, its flagship CEO. And from there, it has steadily grown year after year. The mission of Prairie Band, LLC is to diversify the economic portfolio of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. We do that with three fundamental tenets: we respect the past, we capitalize on current opportunities, and we're always looking to the future for the next generation. Prairie Band, LLC owns and manages a number of companies. We have Prairie Band One Stop. We have Prairie Band Ag, Mill Creek, Prairie Band Health Services, Prairie Band Propane, Prairie Band Construction, and Prairie Band Capital. Prairie Band One Stop was started in 2014. It's frontage property. It's kind of our front lawn to the community. They could see it right off the highway. When they come in, it's a fantastic store that our staff do a great job with, with cleanliness with greeting people. We really have taken our lessons from the gaming operation to provide great customer service in a clean facility. Prairie Band Ag is the newest endeavor of Prairie Band, LLC, and we are looking at industrial hemp operations. Mill Creek was our first acquisition that we made as a company, and strategically we wanted to get a company that was already performing in the government contracting sector and grow it to be our biggest division. Mill Creek does initial outfitting and transition planning services in medical treatment facilities, also primarily on medical treatment facilities for the Department of Defense coast to coast. The capability to provide multiple services to a medical facility from construction services, to putting all the equipment, all the fixtures, to actually outfitting it, knowing how the hospital facilities ran, is a service that we felt would be a nice addition to the portfolio. Prairie Band Propane is essentially a de facto utility. In our local area, there is no natural gas infrastructure, and so the primary means of heating throughout the area is with propane. Construction is one of the unique companies that actually pre-existed Prairie Band, LLC. In 2016 after I became the CEO of the company, we really took a strategic look and said well let's set up and start doing more general contracting and go out and start to self-perform some of these things. Prairie Band Capital passively invests to diversify our own economic holdings within Prairie Band, LLC. Being with this company from near its beginning, it's amazing to see the growth and the development within the community, to see employees who came in at entry level positions and move through the ranks into, you know, management positions or upper management positions, seeing the personal growth and how that affects their personal lives, their families, and the community as a whole. It's very rewarding. There's a lot of upside to what we're doing. There's a lot of potential for growth for our company and we'll continue making it a great place to work, a great place to grow, and a great place that employees and our tribal citizens are proud of.