Small Biz Focus: Arlington Announces Small Business Emergency GRANT Recipients

This column is sponsored by BizLaunch, a division of Arlington Economic Development.

The GRANT provides immediate financial assistance to Arlington’s small businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Arlington County today announced 394 businesses are receiving the Small Business Emergency GRANT (Giving Resiliency Assets Near Term).

The GRANT program provides financial assistance to Arlington’s small businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The GRANT funds were designed to bridge the gap to provide near-term relief for businesses and nonprofits, some of whom have experienced delays or limitations with federal relief initiatives.

Businesses and nonprofits considered for the GRANT had to be located in Arlington County, have fewer than 50 employees, and demonstrate revenue losses of 35 percent or more as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The GRANT is being made on behalf of Arlington County, the Arlington Industrial Development Authority and the Ballston, Crystal City and Rosslyn Business Improvement Districts (BID). The GRANT will provide a total of $2.8 million in funding.

This amount includes an increase of $1.6 million from CARES Act funding that the Arlington County Board approved yesterday — more than doubling the funding available for applicants. Based on the available funding, 394 businesses (53 percent of eligible applicants) will receive a financial grant. Businesses across the County, in a wide variety of industry sectors and geographic locations, received grants.

Award amounts varied, up to $10,000 per business. More than 37 percent are restaurant and food service businesses and nearly 26 percent are personal service businesses, approximately 10% are health and medical businesses and 10 percent are retail businesses. Recommended grantees are concentrated along the major commercial corridors. Nearly 44% of awarded businesses are in the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor (Zip Codes 22201, 22203 and 22209) and 20% are along the Route 1 Corridor (Zip Code 22202). Approximately 13% are in the Columbia Pike Zip Code area.

“With our small businesses among those most affected by the pandemic, the Board thought it was important to provide more funding for GRANT,” Arlington County Board Chair Libby Garvey said. “This new funding will make it possible to provide much-needed funding to more than 50 percent of the eligible applicants. For those that do not receive funding, we still offer business and financial planning assistance. We hope that our small businesses will seek our advice if they would like, and will continue to pursue other avenues of support. We want all our businesses to be able to recover and thrive again as we continue our phased reopening.”

“Throughout the pandemic, we heard over and over again that financial assistance was what our business community needed most,” said Telly Tucker, Director of Arlington Economic Development. “And we’ve kept in constant contact with all our businesses to provide a variety of resources to help, from these GRANT funds to individual meetings to sessions on how to effectively pivot operations in order to continue through the last few months. As we now look forward and begin to reopen, we’re hopeful these GRANT funds will help those businesses hit the hardest — those that would be unable to continue operations without this financial aid.”

Applications were evaluated through a competitive process. More than 1,100 applications were received for consideration. Applications were evaluated based on criteria that considers the impact to employees, business operations and the Arlington business community.

GRANT funds must be used for employee salary and benefits and other business capital and operating expenses directly related to the immediate impacts of COVID-19. Recipients are required to submit a final report to Arlington Economic Development and provide documentation of grant use.

A list of the GRANT recipients is available on the Arlington Economic Development website.