Scott Swanson
So what’s Sweet Home’s economic development director to do during the coronavirus pandemic shutdown?
“It’s been a whirlwind,” Blair Larsen said Friday, the first day of Gov. Kate Brown’s Phase 1 Reopening Plan.
“I was hired to do one job and suddenly that job has become something entirely different. Economic development becomes preservation, rescue.”
It’s still too early to really tell for sure how Sweet Home’s business community has weathered the economic downturn engendered by the COVID-19 restrictions.
At least one local store is reportedly shutting the doors of its physical location and others have not yet reopened, despite the limited relaxations of the sequestration rules that went into effect Friday, May 15. Meanwhile, there were lines of customers waiting to get inside local restaurants on Friday night and Facebook posts showing customers enjoying their first day back in local taverns in a long while.
“I’ve heard that one of our coffee stands had a record-breaking day for them,” Larsen said last week. “At the same time, obviously, the movie theater has been shut down for two months. We have polar opposites.”
Larsen, who is also the city’s planning director, said he’s spent most of his time since the early days of the shutdown simply trying to “pry out whatever information I could and interpret what was coming from the state.”
He said local businesses have taken advantage of federal PPP and SBA grants and loans, and the city is working to help business owners, particularly sole proprietors, who have not been able to get payroll support or other help offered in the federal programs.
Early on, city officials talked about whether they should put together an assistance program
The state, through Business Oregon, is offering $10 million in multiple phases to small businesses that have yet to receive any government aid, with tiered amounts available based on how many employees a business has. The first round of funding will be $2.5 million, and Larsen would like to see $100,000 of that go to Sweet Home businesses.
Half the money comes from from the state’s General Fund, which will be combined with another $5 million redirected from existing programs at Business Oregon, including $50,000 in match money from Sweet Home’s economic development funds.
For the first round of funding, Business Oregon is issuing a request for proposals from cities, counties, and Economic Development Districts that have existing small business COVID-relief programs or will stand up new programs to issue grants to local small businesses with fewer than 25 employees, with an emphasis on sole proprietors and historically disadvantaged businesses.
To be eligible, businesses have to have been forced to close by the governor’s executive order or have seen a 50 percent drop in monthly revenues in March and April, as compared to January and February of this year, or March and April of last year, Larsen said.
“I’m mainly trying to get the word out to women and minority-owned businesses,” he said. “If they’ve already received federal aid, they’re not eligible.”
An example, he said, might be a hairdresser who operates on her own and has been unable to qualify for federal help.
“A lot of sole proprietorships have not been able to quality for PPP or SBA loans.” They may be able to qualify for this.”
The problem, which is something he says he wants to work on, is that he has limited means of tracking down local business owners who might be eligible.
“I’m not sure because we don’t have a registry,” Larsen said. “I only know how businesses are doing based on what they tell me.”
There’s been talk of establishing some sort of business registry and “I think this has really pushed that forward,” Larsen said. “We need a business database for the city. Something like that would be beneficial for both the city and businesses, incredibly valuable.
“We don’t want to regulate businesses. But we want to know what you do, how many employees you have, where you do business and contact info. All that makes it easier for us to provide support, get the word out from the state.”
Larsen said that, since arriving in Sweet Home just under a year ago, he’s been working on connecting with businesses because “most of economic development is really relationship building. As I get those relationships going, connect the dots with people, it’s really helpful.”
Surviving the COVID-19 shutdown is an exercise in basic business operation, he said.
He said he’s heard from business owners who figure their best bet is to rely on their own ingenuity.
“I appreciate that hope, but the ones who are most successful grab any opportunity they can find.”
To survive the pandemic, Larsen said, “you have to cast a wide net. You can’t rely on one source of help. This has taught us that you have to get as wide as possible as far as your customer base, your supply sources, your distribution, your financing. Because if you go too narrow, a disruption like this can really have a drastic effect.”
On the development side of things, Larsen said a lot of contractors in Sweet Home have kept building during the pandemic, “with social distancing as part of the work.”
“There’s a fair amount of work going on out there. Life goes on even when you’re restricted.”
Larsen said he got a pleasant surprise, out of the blue, in recent weeks that will impact economic development in Sweet Home “in the post-apocalyptic world:” communication from Linn County that it is ready to move forward with widening and extending 24th Avenue to create street access to the former Weyerhaeuser mill property.
There are a few hurdles left, including nailing down an agreement with the Albany and Eastern Railroad Co., which owns the tracks the street will have to cross to enter the former mill property to the north.
“Early talks have gone well,” Larsen said.
“It’s not anything huge, but they’re marking out where the center lines are going to be, where this thing is going to go.”