ADRIAN — A variety of EV and hybrid vehicles helped Creek Enterprise introduce the public to the company’s expansion into EV charging infrastructure at an open house at its Adrian headquarters on Oct. 4.
Creek Enterprise has 16 locations in seven states — in Jackson and Adrian as well as in Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Florida, Minnesota, and Missouri. The Adrian headquarters is at 638 W. Maumee St., in what used to be the YMCA.
The company has long been an end-to-end information-technology company, providing customers with the infrastructure and related services they need in their own operations.
Ron Hillard, vice president of technical services for the Midwest and Southwest, explained in an interview during the October open house that the company, which has been in business since 2003, started out in telecommunications construction, putting “fiberoptics in the air and in the ground” for companies such as Frontier and what is now Lumen.
More recently, the company has moved beyond external installation work to also providing state-of-the-art services on the other end of the fiberoptic cables.
These services include installing and administering IT infrastructure; application development; systems administration; cybersecurity services such as assessments, employee training, antivirus solutions, and penetration testing; surveillance and access systems, VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone systems, and more.
And so, as electric vehicles have become increasingly common, it was logical for Creek Enterprise to expand into that field as well, installing the infrastructure needed to charge EVs including the chargers themselves and the related electrical conduit that runs into a building.
“Michigan needs 90,000 Level 2 chargers” to meet the growing demand, said Andrew Pickford, project manager of renewable resources.
Chargers come in three levels, Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3, each of which provides different charging capabilities. A Level 2 charger will charge a vehicle in a couple of hours, while a Level 3 charger is considerably faster.
Level 1 chargers are basic at-home chargers, while Level 2 chargers are the type that might be installed either at a home or at a business and Level 3 chargers are designed to be used for “on the go” charging during, say, a trip.
Getting into the charger business “allows us to use our existing expertise,” Pickford said. “It ties into what we already do.”
The company employs about 250 people in all, according to Hillard, with about 30 of those workers based in Adrian. There’s also a sister company near Tecumseh, Creek Plastics, located at the intersection of M-50 and M-52, that manufactures the conduit needed to encase the various types of cables the company installs — large spools of which were on hand at the open house for people to see.
The October event featured giveaways, music, food, and a look at some of Creek Enterprise’s expanding capabilities.
Visitors could tour the company’s solar-powered workstation, a trailer which is designed to provide a self-contained mobile office — it could, for example, travel to an area where the IT infrastructure needs rebuilt after a natural disaster — and see how Creek Enterprise’s newly installed Level 2 charger works.
They could also get a look at a number of vehicles emblematic of the new EV technologies, including a Tesla Cybertruck displayed by Burt and Kelli Sloan of the Tesla Owners Club of Michigan and several cars and SUVs provided by local dealers, such as a Hummer EV, a Chevrolet Equinox EV, and a Cadillac Lyriq.
Ashley King, office manager for the IT and infrastructure team, helped plan the open house along with Ashleigh Benson, the company’s marketing manager.
“This has been fun,” King said. “We wanted to showcase our end-to-end connectivity services. We’re trying to move ahead with the times, and this has let us show people where Creek is.”
