Over $6 million earmarked to aid Prince William County businesses

Prince William County is working on distributing funds that it hopes will help bring businesses back to life post-pandemic with safety and health guidelines in practice.

The coronavirus pandemic forced a number of businesses in the county to close or be impacted, particularly in the restaurant, retail, and travel sectors. In April, the Prince William County Department of Economic Development created the Economic Recovery Task Force to help staff develop recommendations to aid the county’s post-pandemic recovery

According to a Prince William County press release, county supervisors voted to appropriate $5 million from the CARES Act, and $1 million from the county’s Economic Development Opportunity Fund to institute the recommendations. Christina Winn, the executive director of the Department of Economic Development, told the board in a recent presentation that the Economic Opportunity Fund money will give incentives to opening small businesses and encourage existing businesses to make improvements, according to the press release.

A total of $500,000 from the Economic Development Fund would be used to reduce or eliminate development fees and provide expedited processing to help restaurants, retail and mixed-use development to repurpose workplaces to accommodate business in the coronavirus era. The remaining $500,000 will provide grants to the targeted sectors of information communication technology, federal government contracting, and more to stimulate the economy.

The Department of Economic Development will work with the Industrial Development Authority of Prince William County to determine which businesses would receive grants of up to $30,000. The grants could be used for operating, recruiting and capital investment, according to the Prince William press release.

Some money from the CARES Act will go toward Infrastructure and Innovation Grants of up to $200,000 each to service-oriented businesses, such as restaurants and hotels, to make safety improvements to their facilities. Those improvements could include improving curbside pickup operations or ventilation system upgrades to improve air quality.

Other funding from the CARES Act will go towards Workforce Reskilling and Transition Grants, which could help roughly 16,100 unemployed people in the county who are unlikely to return to work by the end of 2020, according to Prince William press release.

Up to $1.5 million will be used to create “virtual hubs” that could connect people who are unemployed or underemployed with training opportunities for new jobs. Funding will also be used to contract with education partners to provide vouchers for training.

The press release states that with the $150,000 to $200,000 from the CARES Act, the Small Business Technical Assistance Program will hire up to five business consultants through the Mason Small Business Development Center. This will provide free counseling and training services to small businesses in Prince William, Arlington, and Fairfax counties, the cities of Manassas and Richmond.

The consultants will work with small businesses to provide business recovery and other technical expertise which would not normally be available to many small businesses, including women and minority-owned businesses, according to a press release.

Economic Development’s Be Safe, Work Safe, Shop Safe program will receive $250,000 to $500,000 from the CARES Act funding to establish training and education programs for business owners and their employees. Vouchers will be made available to employers to provide training to businesses and their employees on how to operate in accordance with guidelines set forth by the CDC, OSHA, and VDH, according to the press release.

The training will provide instruction on how to properly wear a mask, clean and sanitize, and how to practice social distancing to keep them and their customers safe. The training will also provide an additional level of consumer confidence as reopening continues.

Lastly, the Prince William press release states the economic development department’s Ambassador program will use $50,000 to $250,000 to temporarily assign county staff to lead a team of volunteers to help distribute information on the safety guidelines established by OSHA, the CDC, and the VDH. The volunteers and staff will make “house calls” to area businesses to remove the information.

More information about assistance for local small businesses is available at princewilliamcounty.biz.