Business grant program set up

The city of Avon Lake City Council voted Nov. 23 to set up a grant program for small businesses with the threat of another business shutdown during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Economic Development Director Ted Esborn said the city is looking forward to partnering with the Lorain County Chamber of Commerce and Lorain County Community College’s Small Business Development Center in providing some help to local entrepreneurs.

The program will provide grants between $1,000 and $2,500 to businesses with between three and 20 employees operating in the city and have commercial space.

“The County Chamber ran their own small business grant program in the spring, and that was funded by a lot of the large businesses in the county,” Esborn said. “But since then, they have run grant programs for Avon and they’re now running a program for the city of Lorain.

“So, we’ve been discussing that possibility for probably a couple of months, but it was this week, quite candidly, with the possibility of business shutdowns, that we felt like we needed to act.”

The program will be funded with $100,000 in the city’s share of CARES Act funding with rules modified to meet the needs of Avon Lake businesses with Chamber support.

“The real appeal of working with the County Chamber on a grant program is that they have the structure in place to organize applications and review them, and they can process grant awards, very quickly,” Esborn said.

Applications will be available Dec. 1 with grants awarded in early January.

Esborn noted the city is hoping to work with businesses in targeting grants to their specific needs, with the hope of providing as much help as possible as COVID-19 cases have continued to increase.

The criteria was developed by the Chamber, Esborn said.

While Avon Lake has many great businesses with sole proprietors, the program is targeted to economic assistance to help the broadest number of businesses as possible, he said.

“I think that it’s a tough decision to require a business to have a few employees, but I think the reasoning is, we do have to focus the program somehow and sort of narrow the field of businesses, because you know we can’t get to all of them, so that’s why we’ve got it at three employees on the low end and then on the high end 20 employees,” Esborn said.

He called it a marker before the city reaches its larger businesses, and sets a good balance with the portfolio of businesses operating in Avon Lake.