SBA head speaks to business owners affected by disaster
The head of the Small Business Administration visited Baltimore on Thursday, speaking with local leaders and business owners whose firms have been impacted by last week’s collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Speaking after the roundtable at one of the agency’s two recovery centers near the Port of Baltimore, SBA Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman said business owners described a “full range of impact” stemming from last week’s collapse, which eliminated a major ground transport route and closed the Port of Baltimore to marine traffic. Six construction workers were killed.
Guzman said she had heard from business owners whose firms “were 100% dependent” on the Key Bridge and marine traffic into the Port of Baltimore, as well as others — such as restaurants that served port workers — facing economic ripple effects from the collapse.
“Clearly, there’s heightened concern, uncertainty with whether or not they can sustain this closure,” Guzman said.
Guzman was accompanied at the closed media roundtable by other federal and local leaders. At a later news conference, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland said some of the stories they heard from business owners were “heart-wrenching.”
“We know about all the containers that go through the Port of Baltimore,” Cardin, a Democrat, said. “We don’t realize how many small businesses are impacted if those containers don’t come in.”
The recovery center where Guzman spoke, at 1501 S. Clinton St. in Canton, is bordered by retail stores on one side and the firms that transport goods from the port on the other. A few miles southeast was the port and farther, the 1.6-mile span of Interstate 695 that has blocked marine traffic from entering it since March 26, blocking the flow of those goods.
Another recovery center location in Baltimore County was slated to move from its current location at 11 Center Place in Dundalk to the Community College of Baltimore County in Dundalk. Both of those will be open Friday, but only the CCBC location at 7200 Sollers Point Road will be open after that.
In an interview Thursday morning, Guzman said she wanted to make sure she spoke with “a range of businesses” in Baltimore to understand their unique challenges stemming from the collapse.
Earlier this week, the SBA opened the two “recovery centers” near the port, where affected businesses can apply for low-interest loans from the agency to overcome revenue losses
stemming from the disruption.
Small businesses and nonprofits affected by last week’s bridge collapse can apply for loans of up to $2 million until the end of the year. Over 500 applications had been filed as of Thursday afternoon, according to Guzman. The first payment for approved loans is not due, and interest is not accrued, for the first 12 months, according to the SBA. The agency’s economic injury disaster loans are often made available for certain areas hit by natural occurrences like droughts and tornadoes but have also extended to businesses affected by mass shootings, factory explosions and road closures.
“Those payments are not due for 12 months so that business can use this cash to maintain payroll, maintain their overhead and be able to continue to survive,” Guzman said at a news conference Thursday.
The bridge disaster is yet another unique case for the federal program. Determining and assessing the collapse’s full economic impact is an “ongoing challenge,” Guzman said, noting that the aftershock from disruption to the supply chain will become more visible in the long term. To remedy that, she said the agency has a “strong network on the ground,” including local agencies like small business development centers, to adapt and
work to support businesses that are working to assess the financial impact of the collapse’s fallout.
“We know that supply chains and transportation logistics companies are impacted immediately” by the collapse, she said, but “on an ongoing basis, we know that there’s going to be regional impacts that we will be challenged to assess until we find those businesses and work with them.”
Guzman, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2021 to head the SBA, said the federal agency hopes to reach those businesses as they see revenue losses and disruption in their daily operations due to the collapse and offer
them support. The SBA’s disaster declaration covers all of Maryland as well as Washington and counties in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Biden, whose administration has already put forth millions in federal funds for the cleanup and the rebuilding of the bridge, is expected to visit the site of the collapse Friday.
Businesses who apply for the loans may not see funds disbursed for “a couple of weeks” as they are underwritten and processed, Guzman said, noting the administration is using a “high-touch, in-person, on-the-ground approach” to get businesses through the application process quickly.