Glen Cove business owners can now ‘sleep at night’ because of the Payroll Protection Program. 

When businesses were ordered to close by Gov. Andrew Cuomo over a month ago, John Tymann, the owner of STN Tanning Supplies in Glen Cove, feared that he would be forced to let go of employees. 

“As a business owner, that’s the scariest thing for me,” Tymann said. “You have employees who rely on you… it makes you feel like you failed.” 

So when Tymann was approved for the Payroll Protection Program, which is part of the federal stimulus bill signed by President Donald Trump, he was so relieved that he said he could finally sleep at night. “I can sleep at night now,” Tymann said. “Your payroll for at least eight weeks is covered, which is great.” 

After Trump signed a new stimulus bill on March 23, which sent an extra $300 billion in federal guarantees for the PPP loans to allow business owners to keep their employees after the initial funds ran dry, American Community Bank, which operates a branch in Glen Cove, signed up right away. 

“We are an SBA approved lender,” Matthew Nartowicz, an ACB regional manager, said. “We heard about this program coming out and we made sure that we weren’t just SBA lenders, but that we were approved for the Paycheck Protection Program very early on.” 

The SBA, or the Small Business Administration, has been offering extra funding programs, including the PPP, with a resource of $2 trillian provided by the federal CARES Act that was passed on March 27. The SBA will forgive PPP loans as long as employees are kept on the payroll for eight weeks and the money is used for payroll, rent, mortgage interest or utilities. 

“We were able to quickly get a good understanding of this product and offer this to our customers and non-customers,” Nartowicz said. “It’s been overwhelming. When it first came out, a lot of banks were only offering it to their customers and we heard horror stories where individuals couldn’t get in touch with their banks.” 

Tymann was able to get in touch with ACB’s Glen Cove branch and was subsequently approved after filling out a one-page application. He said it only took ACB a week to handle his case. 

Nartowicz, who has worked in Glen Cove for 11 years and is a board member of the Glen Cove Chamber of Commerce, said that him and his team wanted to make sure that they were there for the business owners in the community, even if they weren’t clients of the bank. 

“[Glen Cove] was hit hard during this pandemic and a lot of small businesses are closed right now, so I know it’s a very tough time,” Nartowicz said. “Anything we can do to help… from just knowledge to programs here that can help them get on their feet and help them get ready to open their doors, is what we’re trying to do.” 

Yajhayra Reyes, the owner of the Glen Cove Salt Cave and administrator for the Glen Cove Chamber of Commerce, said that not only is she seeing the impact of Covid-19 on businesses in the city through her work with the chamber, she is experiencing it first hand. “We’re closed,” Reyes said. “We are doing some online stuff, but it’s not the same. You know?”

“What we’ve been trying to do [at the chamber] is show the community that we are here to lend a hand and just hear them out when they’re speaking about their struggles,” Reyes said. “I feel like we’ve all gotten together and done a bunch of different things to help the community in different ways.”  

She said that the PPP has been a helpful resource for many of Glen Cove’s businesses and that she was able to take advantage of the program for herself. “I was able to sleep easier that night,” Reyes said. “I don’t have to worry so much about what’s going to happen in the next month or so.”