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Chamber chief: Local businesses not giving up

(EDITOR’S NOTE: As the small business community pins its hopes on economic recovery, the future is uncertain. Today the Sun-Gazette begins an ongoing series spotlighting local small businesses as we navigate the uncharted course ahead as a community. We begin with the outlook from the Williamsport/Lycoming Chamber of Commerce and the first story on individual businesses.)

For many businesses and industries, COVID-19 has been like the thief who comes in the night to make off with cherished valuables.

Operations have ceased or curtailed, and employees furloughed to create pain for everyone.

But perhaps the scariest part of it all is the unknown.

“The challenge with small business is the government has closed everything until April 30,” Jason Fink, president of the Williamsport/Lycoming Chamber of Commerce, said. “There is no information beyond that. It’s a challenge for them to plan anything.”

Each day, Fink hears from local businesses worried about the future.

The good news is that many are taking advantage of government resources such as the Paycheck Protection Plan, a Small Business Administration loan to provide a direct incentive for small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll.

SBA forgives the loans if all employees are kept on the payroll for eight weeks and the money is used for wages, rent, mortgage interest, or utilities.

“We are hearing from the banks that many businesses are applying,” Fink said. “The challenge is, this is taking place across the country. The SBA is only able to act so quickly as they have so many to process.”

Many businesses, he added, are still waiting to hear about securing SBA funding through the Economy Injury Disaster Loan program.

The program, already in place when the coronavirus crisis hit, offers low-interest federal loans to help small businesses and other entities recover from economic injury as a result of the pandemic.

The good news, Fink said, is that despite the setbacks, business owners don’t seem to be ready to give up and close their doors.

“That is one thing I have not heard,” he said. “That gives me hope. This definitely is the biggest challenge these businesses have ever faced. They just need to go after what is available to them. We need to get back to what we were doing at some point. Businesses are just waiting to see when that can happen.”

For some entrepreneurs, including the many who operate restaurants dotting downtown Williamsport and the rest of the region, their business has long been their livelihood. Although some continue to take orders for pick-up or delivery, dining areas have been shut down.

“They are being crushed. It’s not just Williamsport. It’s every place in Lycoming County. Very few restaurants are taking lunch orders, and that’s just the restaurant side of businesses,” Fink said.

Is their hope?

Fink thinks so.

“I am always optimistic,” he said. “This is definitely not something I would have predicted at the beginning of the year. I look at what we have right now, the type of people we have here, and the way people have banded together. Employers value their employees. Owners value and respect their employees. Many of them never expected to see them on unemployment.”

Even social distancing, in a strange twist of fate, has brought them together, he said.

The coronavirus pandemic shouldn’t hurt future efforts by the chamber of commerce to recruit new companies to the area.

Companies in urban areas hit hard by COVID-19 may look to more rural areas to do manufacturing or other business, Fink noted.

The coronavirus pandemic has surely tested the nation’s ability to supply hospitals with protective gear, most of which is manufactured in Asia, which has led to speculation of American business operations moved overseas returning to the United States.

“We see possibility and opportunities for reshoring with more focus on things that are being dealt with now overseas,” Fink said.

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