BUFFALO, N.Y. — In order to help business owners during the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government gave out loans to millions of businesses while they were shutdown to stop the spread of coronavirus.
Now that some time has passed, it's becoming clear just how many of those loans helped out local WNY businesses. 2 On Your Side has been digging through the numbers and we know quite a bit now.
In all, 19,165 businesses got loans in the eight counties of Western New York.That includes corporations, LLC's, independent contractors, sole proprietors and others who qualified.
We only know the ranges for some of the loan amounts, so those loans add up to between $1.8 and $3.5 billion dollars in Western New York alone. Across the country, the PPP paid out hundreds of billions of dollars to businesses.
Keep this in mind -- the U.S. Treasury Department only gave the actual names of companies that got loans of at least $150,000.
More than 16,000 of the local loans, the vast majority, were under that amount.So we don't know which businesses got those smaller loans, but collectively, they added up to $588 million.
Businesses that received the larger loans, which were $150,000 and above,were named and categorized in different ranges.
About 1,700 businesses got between $150,000 and $300,000. Nearly 1,000 businesses loans somewhere between $350,000 and $1 million.
Exactly 263 companies got PPP loans between $1 and $2 million and another 125 businesses got between $2 and $5 million.
There were 19 local companies that got the biggest loans, with amounts between $5 and $10 million dollars.
Those largest of loans went to some pretty big-name businesses here in our region, including New Era Cap Company, Perry's Ice Cream, West Herr Ford, Ferguson Electric and Hodgson Russ law firm.
Several medical companies also got the biggest loans. Those were ECMC, Eastern Niagara Hospital, Evergreen Health Services, Buffalo Medical Group and Dent Neurologic Group.
You can search for which WNY companies received PPP by the loan amount range.
You can search for which WNY companies received PPP by the loan amount range.