City seeking $250,000 grant to aid businesses

First they went physical, now they’ve gone fiscal.

Ten years after addressing the physical nature of the downtown with the Stellar Grant, the City of Greencastle is turning its attention to a fiscal remedy for local businesses.

While the 2011 Stellar Grant provided more than $19 million to upgrade building facades and other physical attributes of the downtown, this time the city is applying for a quarter-million dollars to assist local businesses that have been negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

At its recent February meeting, the City Council conducted a public hearing on application for the maximum $250,000 Office of Community and Rural Affairs (OCRA) COVID-19 grant.

The Council also unanimously passed Resolution 2021-1, authorizing the application submission and committing a local match of $6,250 from city EDIT funds.

To date, the city has received 20 applications from local businesses having been advised of the grant possibility by the Greater Greencastle Chamber of Commerce or Greencastle/Putnam County Development Center.

Grant administrator Kristy Jerrell said the state has in excess of $20 million that it plans to distribute to an estimated 110 grant recipient cities and towns.

She noted that if 25 Greencastle businesses apply, they could each get $10,000 to help ease the fiscal pain of crippling issues such as reduced sales, laid-off staff and even closings.

“This is a great way for these businesses to recoup some of the money they lost in the pandemic,” Jerrell said. “We’ve going to have a really good application.”

She should know. She was grant administrator for the City of Attica, which was funded in an earlier round of OCRA grants and was able to assist 22 local businesses.

Meanwhile, with the Putnam County Commissioners and the Town of Bainbridge also applying for a grant, Jerrell said she would be “talking up the regional impact.”

Jerrell called on a couple of local business owners in the City Hall audience to share their pandemic experiences.

Gail Smith, owner of Almost Home for 30 years, said the virus has produced “a very challenging time.”

“It pretty much yanked the rug out from under my business,” she said, detailing “substantial losses,” personnel layoffs and the added strain of finding herself working 10 hours a day, seven days a week to make up for a short staff.

“For the city to apply for something like this,” Smith added, “is such a good thing for me and makes me feel good that the city is more of a partner with small business.

“I think it’s a win-win for everyone, especially with it being dollars you don’t have to pay back. It warms my heart that the city’s out there behind us.”

Greencastle resident Jon Clark, who owns The Watering Hole, a liquor store in Fillmore, said he didn’t have it “anywhere near as tough as restaurants,” but he said he was impacted in different ways.

He had to reduce business hours and shut down on occasion while able to make only curbside sales, “which was not very much fun at all.”

“I had to pay someone every day (or do it himself) to stand by the door and tell people they couldn’t come in,” he said.

Clark said he also saw his clientele, especially repeat customers, struggle with many people laid off or on reduced hours.

He called it “a domino effect,” saying that his suppliers have struggled to keep up, and consequently he has found it difficult to keep product on his shelves. With the borders closed, Clark said, it has been tough to get tequilas or Canadian whiskeys.

“If you’ve got nothing to put on the shelves, it doesn’t matter how many customers you have if you have nothing to sell to them,” he concluded.

On a motion from Councilman Dave Murray, the Council unanimously passed Resolution 2021-1, authorizing application for the OCRA grant.