Beverly Plans To Award Excess Of $1 Million To Small Businesses

BEVERLY, MA — Beverly Mayor Mike Cahill said he expects the city to dedicate more than $1 million of its $12.6 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding to small business relief through its recently announced assistance program.

Cahill told the Beverly City Council on Tuesday night that these small business relief funds are "one of the important areas for focus with our ARPA capabilities" and that the intention is that every eligible business that applies receive some funding.

"We have a ceiling in mind," Cahill said. "But we also want to know what's needed. and we won't know that entirely until we see all of the eligible applications submitted. But we anticipate that it will be in excess of $1 million."

Beverly ARPA Small Business Manager Jaimie Corliss went over the protocols for the program that will pay out between $5,000 and up to %50,000 to businesses in certain industries that showed a loss related to the COVID-10 health crisis.

The program is designed to benefit businesses in the hospitality, tourism, arts, recreation and retail, and family care industries, including restaurants, fitness centers, personal service providers, entertainment venues, family childcare centers and retail stores.

Eligible small businesses must have 50 or fewer employees. The grant application deadline is March 9 at 5 p.m.

Corliss said that since the grants are not being awarded on a rolling basis there is no need to get the application in far in advance of the deadline or risk the program running out of money like some other federal relief programs did during the pandemic. She said the losses exhibited must be "reasonable and directly from the impact of COVID" and that the payments are intended to cover operational expenses, not to purchase equipment or for capital expenses.

She said businesses that receive money will have to submit a report to the city on how the funds were used.

It is a grant program and thus the money will not have to be repaid.

"As long as they show that they are eligible there will be grants coming their way," Cahill said. "We're going to do our very best to make sure that the awards are meaningful. The goal is to help these businesses survive and recover.

"We really want all these local businesses to get on through to the other side of COVID and get back to thriving."

Applications can be found here.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)