Corporate Market Place struggling to pay off debt, late on rent

CHRIS CRAWFORD, The Corporate Marketplace Inc. CEO, is shown in this file photograph. The company is operating under a taxpayer-backed loan program, and is struggling to pay off its debt.  / PBN FILE PHOTO/MARY LAUZON
CHRIS CRAWFORD, The Corporate Marketplace Inc. CEO, is shown in this file photograph. The company is operating under a taxpayer-backed loan program, and is struggling to pay off its debt. / PBN FILE PHOTO/MARY LAUZON

PROVIDENCE – The Corporate Market Place Inc., operating under a taxpayer-backed loan program, is struggling to pay off its debt and can’t keep current on its rent.
TCMPi was a 2011 recipient of a $4 million loan guarantee granted by the quasi-governmental agency the R.I. Economic Development Corp. – now R.I. Commerce Corporation – under the Job Creation Guaranty Program.
The company in the past year has laid off employees and has fallen behind on its rent. The state has had to pay $75,335 to the company’s bank to keep it current on its loan.
TCMPi is operating under the same program as Curt Shilling’s famously bankrupt 38 Studios LLC and currently owes Bridge Bank in California $2.25 million, according to Commerce RI spokeswoman Melissa Czerwein.
“Commerce Corp. continues to work with Bridge Bank and Corporate Marketplace to restructure the company’s financing to allow it to continue operating and servicing customers,” Czerwein wrote in an email when asked how the agency would avoid having to repay the rest of the loan.
TCMPi CEO Chris Crawford has not responded to several request for comment, but told PBN last month that he was still in business and that it was “booming.”
The company, a supplier of corporate incentive merchandise, owes its landlord Richard G. Fryburg $32,000, which – pending any payments – is expected to increase by $6,000 in about a week.
Fryburg says Crawford has made “good faith payments” of $2,000 intermittently in the last few months and he’s working with the company to reduce its space and ongoing facility cost.
Fryburg says TCMPi has been downsizing and a former TCMPi employee confirmed he’d been a part of a round of layoffs last year, but wouldn’t comment directly on the state of the company.
Besides 38 Studios, two other companies are participating in the Job Creation Guaranty Program with Commerce RI. The first, NuLabel Technologies Inc., hasn’t drawn down any of its funding, according to Czerwein, and the second – eNow Inc. – is current on its loan payments.

On Dec. 17, Commerce RI sent a letter to former governor Lincoln Chafee notifying him that TCMPi had an insufficiency of funds to pay the full principal to Bridge Bank.

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