These Orange Businesses Scored Restaurant Revitalization Money

ORANGE, CT —Restaurants in Orange were among the more than 1,300 in Connecticut who received nearly $1 billion from the Small Business Administration's Restaurant Revitalization Fund, which was passed by Congress last year as part of a sweeping coronavirus relief package.

The $301,164,069 given to Connecticut restaurants was 24th highest of any state in the country. And the average award of $231,000 to businesses in Connecticut was the 28th highest in the country. But the 1,303 Connecticut businesses that received funding under the program were just a little over 36 percent of the 3,369 that applied to the program, which SBA shut down Wednesday.

In Orange, grants were given to:

"The $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund provided desperately needed relief to more than 100,000 restaurants and other food and beverage businesses across the nation with significant funding going to our hardest-hit, underserved businesses," said SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman in a news release. "Restaurants are at the center of our neighborhoods and propel economic activity on Main Streets. As among the first to close in this pandemic and likely the last to reopen, many are still struggling to survive. The SBA will continue to work hard to ensure they get the resources they need to recover, rebuild and be resilient."

But hundreds of Connecticut restaurants are facing an uncertain future after the U.S. Small Business Administration said last month it was shutting down the Restaurant Revitalization Fund passed by Congress as part of the coronavirus relief package.

"For these restaurant owners, it feels like insult on top of injury," Irene Li, the owner of Mei Mei Boston and the program manager of CommonWealth Kitchen’s Restaurant Resiliency Fund, told the Boston Globe, which first reported this story. "It's like, 'This was supposed to be for us.'"

In an email to applicants last month, SBA said the program will be "disabled" July 14. At that time, it will stop accepting applications. Nationally, the program has handed out grants to 105,000 restaurants, but another 265,000 applicants are still waiting. A bill to replenish the fund has been introduced in Congress, but it has not moved forward.

Despite restaurant industry lobbying for Congress to replenish the fund, lawmakers have been more focused on reaching a compromise on the Biden administration's infrastructure improvement bill.