SBA Administrator Visits Northwest Arkansas

Isabella Casillas Guzman (left), administrator of the Small Business Administration, tours northwest Arkansas on Friday with U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Arkansas.

Isabella Casillas Guzman, administrator of the Small Business Administration, on Friday told northwest Arkansas business owners that the agency is ready to continue helping them and wants to know about their current experiences as well as the future challenges they expect to face.

She toured the region that day at the invitation of U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Arkansas.

Guzman met with business owners at several stops in Benton County, including those who were recipients of Restaurant Revitalization Fund dollars and Shuttered Venue Operators Grants. Those federal aid packages were created to help small business owners who were hurt by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Guzman said the state has received approximately $3 billion in aid since the start of the pandemic.

“Obviously the SBA has had a really outsized role in trying to support small businesses during this time,” Guzman told restaurant owners. “The restaurant industry in particular has been so hard hit. Oftentimes they are the ones who define our main streets and attract people to communities and provide a certain lifestyle.”

Guzman also said more than 101,000 restaurant owners received funds from the RRF.

“Across the nation, we really found that small businesses had to pivot and adapt to be resilient and survive during this time,” Guzman said in a phone interview with Arkansas Business. “The federal relief that has been deployed through the SBA has really been critical to their survival. The PPP gave them hope, the Restaurant Revitalization Fund and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant [program] really positioned these highly impacted industries to regain stability and start looking for growth into the future.”

Womack, during opening remarks to the restaurant owners, said he invited Guzman to northwest Arkansas to see how Arkansas is fighting through the pandemic.

“The hospitality industry was the first impacted and takes the longest to recover,” said Womack, the former mayor of Rogers “There is a tremendous amount of demand out there, but the government puts restrictions on you and then people put restrictions on certain things. How we revitalize our hospitality industry and our restaurant industry is pretty important to me. These are folks who rely on this traffic.”

Guzman said there are still challenges ahead as the Delta variant of the coronavirus has led to another surge of infections in the country. Companies such as Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale recently said that their employees would have to be vaccinated to remain with the company, and Guzman said small business owners can make a similar impact.

“We recognize that small businesses are large employers in the nation; they employ half of the private workforce,” Guzman said. “It is really important they recognize the need to encourage vaccinations as leaders in their community.

“The bottom line is we know that with vaccinations and shots in arms and mask wearing we are able to combat this Delta variant and make sure we can reopen our small businesses.”