Arkansas Family Clears an Inherited Tax Debt and Moves Ahead on Warehouse Expansion
When Matt Merechka married his high school sweetheart, Brandy, he brought her into the family pallet business his father had started before him.
“It’s the only thing I’ve ever known as an adult,” Brandy said. “We got married right out of high school, and this is all that we’ve ever done.”
In 1998, the Merechkas opened their own pallet manufacturing and recycling company, Preferred Pallets, in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Nearly 30 years later, they’re still buying used pallets and refurbishing them for resale. Matt runs day-to-day production and warehouse operations. Brandy handles the business finances and pallet deliveries.
City
Fort Smith
State
County
Sebastian
District
AR-03
Funding
Department
Outcome
An Inherited Building, and an Inherited Debt
When the couple inherited the old Riverside Furniture building in downtown Fort Smith, they saw room to grow. The building offered 67,000 square feet, enough to expand beyond pallets into warehousing. They lined up a construction loan from Simmons Bank to renovate the space and were preapproved.
Then they learned the previous owner had left property taxes unpaid on the building, and that debt came with it when they inherited it. If the debt wasn’t cleared by the end of July, the building would go up for auction. That deadline came months ahead of Simmons’ November closing date on the construction loan.
A Bank Referral Opens a Faster Path
Simmons Bank connected the Merechkas with Communities Unlimited (CU).
The Merechkas Clear the Debt and Keep the Building
The Merechkas paid off the inherited tax debt before the July deadline and kept the building out of auction. They financed the payoff with a small business loan from CU’s Lending Team, closed by Loan Officer Alex Cordero with funding from the Sachs Family Foundation.
Brandy and Matt are now moving ahead with the Simmons construction loan, and renovation on the warehouse has started.
This kind of financing runs through Communities Unlimited’s lending work with entrepreneurs across seven states.
Looking Past the Pallets
Brandy is already looking past the pallets to what the new space makes possible.
“I would like to do less pallets and more warehousing,” Brandy said. “I’m hoping that once the construction’s done, that’s where we’re able to do less pallets and more warehousing. So I’m very excited for the construction to be done so we can hopefully do something a little different.”
Building the Next 30 Years
Once construction wraps, Brandy hopes to shift Preferred Pallets toward warehousing. It would be a second business built in the same space where the family has run pallets for nearly 30 years.
