SBA loans boost businesses

BY MIKE HELENTHAL

DANVILLE — Stimulus funds distributed over the past year have not helped just public agencies.

Five county businesses are listed on the www.recovery.gov Web site, which tracks Small Business Administration loans funded with federal stimulus money (see accompanying box).

In all, nearly $4.3 million in additional money was made available locally.

SBA loans are offered to businesses with difficulties obtaining traditional bank financing — an issue that’s been multiplied with a reduction in available credit resulting from the country’s real-estate market crash.

The loans traditionally are used for capital improvements and expansion costs and approved following a normal loan-application process. The Obama administration recently upped the SBA’s most popular loan programs to $5 million with a prom-ise to infuse the program with more cash from stimulus funds.

Dennis Gaudio, vice president of the Gaudio and Son Budweiser distributorship, said the company used its $1.9 million loan for a portion of its new, multi-million warehouse facility. He said company leaders exhausted all other potential credit lines before inquiring about an SBA loan.

“We hadn’t really planned on going that way,” Gaudio said. “But at the time, everything was collapsing. Our usual financing was dried up at that point. Otherwise it would have been through a local bank.”

Already moving forward on the construction at the time, he said the SBA loan was a matter of “good timing.”

“It turned out to be a pretty good deal,” he said.

Jessie Mitsdarffer, owner of the Wes Foods IGA in Catlin, said his company’s $417,000 loan was used to upgrade equipment.

The same credit crunch led Mitsdarffer to the SBA program, which he said was actually more difficult than he predicted.

“It was quite a long process,” he said. “It was just a matter of making sure everything was covered and in order.”

The new owner of Shrepooja Inc., Tarun Patel, said his $630,000 SBA loan allowed him to purchase the station in October.

“Credit has definitely been difficult,” he said. “I was open to anything.”

Patel said the SBA process was vigorous.

“I had to provide lots and lots of documents,” he said.

HELP FOR BUSINESSES

Five area companies were recipients of Small Business Administration-backed loans financed with federal stimulus dollars. They are:

-- Earl Gaudio and Son, Tilton, $1.9 million

-- AII holding/DBA Automation International, Danville, $900,000

-- Shrepooja Inc. (Phillips 66, 2602 N. Vermilion St.), Danville, $630,000.

-- Bowman Marathon, Danville, $430,000

-- Wes Foods, Catlin, $417,000

Source: http://www.recovery.gov.

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