(Updated 3/24 at 6:10 p.m.)
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The Onondaga County Office of Economic Development has created a temporary bridge-loan program to assist businesses in the county affected by COVID-19.
It’s designed to help companies that are applying to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) under its coronavirus-related emergency loan program but need money to tide them over until the federal funds arrive.
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“The goal of this program is to enable as many Onondaga County businesses as possible to survive” until their SBA loans close, the Onondaga County Office of Economic Development said on its website.
“We are going to have a revolving fund of half-a-million dollars. This is going to work with the timing of the SBA loans that have now been approved in New York,” Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said during a recent coronavirus briefing at the Oncenter.
As McMahon explained it, when small businesses apply to the SBA for emergency loans, they also send their application to the Onondaga County Office of Economic Development.
As the process unfolds, the SBA approves a business owner’s application but the owner usually won’t get any funding until the loan becomes official 60 to 90 days later.
That two-to-three month period could be a “hardship” for the applicant, McMahon noted.
Once the business owner receives the SBA approval letter, the individual should bring the letter to the county’s Office of Economic Development.
“We will close a short-term loan with each business and work out [a dollar figure],” said McMahon. “We’ll figure out what the necessities are for the next 60 days that we can help complement in that we will [provide] a short-term loan … and then on day 91 after the SBA loan is closed on and you get the proceeds from that, you’ll pay back our Onondaga County loan.”
(Editor’s note: After seeing this story, Dan Rickman, the SBA’s deputy district director of upstate New York, emailed CNYBJ to note that the “turnaround time is up to 3 weeks for an SBA loan decision, and after approval, one to two weeks for funding.)
Companies will be required to pay back the money they got from the county within seven days of their SBA loan closing, the county says.
Businesses can apply for the bridge loans at https://www.ongoved.com/assets/Uploads/files/COVID-19-Bridge-Loan-Program-Application-Revised-March-24-2020.pdf
For more information, contact the Onondaga County Office of Economic Development at (315) 435-3770 or email: economicdevelopment@ongov.net
