Jeff Humphrey, Media Manager, 509.625.6308
Friday, May 15, 2020 at 11:55 a.m.
The City of Spokane is cooking up creative new ways to help merchants impacted by COVID-19 restrictions, including liberal loans for businesses.
“What the city is doing is, creating what’s called a loan loss reserve. And what that does is, it allows us to make loans with less underwriting scrutiny so we can get that money out on the streets faster. The City is truly helping us, help companies today. Not two weeks from now. Not a month from now,” emphasized Megan Hulsey of Craft3.
Craft3 is a non- profit business lender.
The city’s Community, Housing and Human Services Department is paying Craft3 to make it easier for stores and restaurants to get flexible loans, they can afford to pay back.
“That’s right. They’re also buying down the interest rate against what we would normally be able to provide for this kind of a loan. So the interest rate is a five percent fixed loan for the life of the loan,” Hulsey said of the city’s contribution to the program.
Jayme Cozzetto took out a $25,000 loan to keep Kitchen Spokane open.
“That will let us pay our leases, our utilities,” Cozzetto said of the Craft3 loan.
Kitchen Spokane is a non-profit incubator for aspiring cooks and caterers like Martha Domitrovich, who are trying to grow new businesses.
“It’s given me an opportunity to open a restaurant business without having all the added expense of equipment, extra health department situations,” Domitrovich said of her business, the. Supper Club.
“The City is doing a really important thing by providing this resource during this downturn to carry through people to normalcy or, what our new sense of normalcy will be,” Cozzetto added.
The city’s Business Resilience Loan Program is designed to help employers, and their staff, recover from COVID-19 closures.
“The idea is to make it easy to access and also affordable to pay back. But also, readily available to the businesses that are struggling,” stressed Hulsey.
Helping Spokane businesses helps generate new sales tax revenues and gives people a chance to earn a paycheck again.
If you think your company could benefit from the Business Resilience Loan Program, visit the Small Business Resources page.
