Ryan Engle, owner, Masonic Center

MARQUETTE — As lawmakers in Washington are hammering out a new $484 billion deal in legislation that could help small business owners, hundreds of Upper Peninsula businesses are left to deal with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and are hoping that this round of funding is enough.

If approved, the new funding package will spend an additional $310 billion on the Paycheck Protection Program. The first round — $350 billion in funding provided by the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security, or CARES, legislation package — was exhausted within two weeks.

The Small Business Administration said it had approved over 1.66 million loans for more than $342 billion before the funds ran out.

“I don’t think it’s enough. I don’t think that we are supporting our small businesses enough,” said Masonic Center owner Ryan Engle.

He is one of the lucky ones, in that he recently received word that his business qualifies for a PPP loan.

Funds from the loan can be used for up to eight weeks of payroll costs including benefits and can also be used to pay interest on mortgages, rent, and utilities, according to the CARES website.

Engle feels he got in on that first round of funding by applying as soon as the program opened up.

The successful application is even more important to the employees of his business, he said, who otherwise would not have a source of income.

“The monies from that will help us float for the next few months to keep our people on payroll,” Engle said. “We are keeping people on payroll partially because two of our employees, at least, we’re unable to get unemployment because they don’t make enough money. They were denied because they did not bring in enough dollars within the quarter and even though that is their sole income they were denied unemployment because of that.”

The Masonic Center rents space to 12 other small businesses, Engle said.

“My big concern is, how many businesses out there didn’t have the ability to apply for that loan in the time that you could apply for it. I mean, I was lucky, I was able to apply the day it opened up,” Engle said. “And I also don’t know what is going to happen with my tenants downstairs because they are all struggling as well. Because … we are all in the same boat.”

Small businesses in Michigan totaled more than 870,000 in 2019, according to the Small Business Administration. Approximately 170,000 are small firms with fewer than 500 employees, 148,000 are commercial or downtown “Main Street” businesses and 703,000 are self-employed across a broad spectrum of industries.

To put that into an Upper Peninsula perspective, one only has to look at a recent $10 million Small Business Relief Program launched by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation in March.

The program, which redirected funds designated to attract new businesses to the state, allotted $500,000 to be awarded across 15 U.P. counties.

Of the 800 applications received, only 80 businesses were awarded funding, InvestUP CEO Marty Fittante said.

“We suspected going into this process that we would have only a fraction of the money available that was going to be requested by Upper Peninsula business because of the profound impact that we had heard this crisis was having on the small business community,” Fittante said. “And, unfortunately, that proved very true.”

The Masonic Center was one of those businesses that had its application denied.

“The answer is they had 800 applicants and most of them were not funded,” Engle said. “So, they didn’t have enough money. They were unprepared for the amount of people, places and things that applied for that particular grant.”

Fittante said the modest nature of the MEDC grant means it was never anticipated that the program “would address the significant need that exists and the profound challenges that our business community continues to face.”

“The most meaningful assistance that is available to our local business community right now is federal programming,” Fittante said. “In fact, to give some sense of the impact of that programming and the need locally, if I were to hazard a guess, I would be reasonably confident guessing that over a $150 million dollars has been approved through the CARES Paycheck Protection Program for Upper Peninsula businesses.”

Engle said he understands the governor’s stay-at-home order, but noted that helping the small “Mom and Pop” businesses survive should be a priority as well.

“My personal honest opinion is that this is the right thing. I think we are doing the right thing to try to keep people safe. Opening the economy up slowly makes sense to me,” Engle said. “But I don’t think that we have found an effective way to make sure that small businesses will be around. I think what we are going to see without more funding or more support, I believe we will see a lot of small businesses struggle and possibly fail because, (this is) taking 60 to 90 days out of their normal income cycle. I can tell you from the Masonic’s standpoint we’re even if they open up the state of Michigan on (May) first, which I honestly don’t believe is going to happen. I don’t think we will see a resurgence where our business even starts to take off again until at least August and I think it’s more September. Most of my events are either canceled or postponing, you know through into August because we don’t know, nobody knows what is going to happen.”

For up-to-date information on coronavirus relief programs for small businesses. visit update906. com.

Lisa Bowers can be reached at lbowers@miningjournal.net.