Relief Funding Allows Local Bank to Stimulate Hundreds of Yuma Businesses

YUMA - Ariz. (KYMA, KECYTV) The Payment Protection Program (PPP) passed by Congress last month as part of a massive relief bill authorized up to $349 billion in forgivable loans for small businesses. 

It allowed First Bank Yuma, Yuma's only locally owned bank to help hundreds of locally owned businesses with the help of the Yuma County Chamber of Commerce. 

"We have been able to get $40 million funded through PPP loans," said Wayne Gale, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer with First Bank Yuma."That is almost 300 of our customers that we have been able to assist and that feels really good cause that is money that is really needed in the community." 

The bank that started with a group of local entrepreneurs now has five branches in Yuma County and has been serving hundreds of locally owned businesses since 2001. 

"We have actually grown quite a bit because of the new loans and the deposits that have come in," Gale said. "I don't think anybody could, as you said, assume it would be as strong and as dangerous as this one is." 

Chris Wheeler owns Yuma's only craft brewery, Prison Hill. He saw what was coming months ahead of the outbreak in the United States and was concerned for business. 

"I have got friends that live in Italy that was hit with the quarantine very very early on and got to see the virus progress," said Chris Wheeler, owner of Prison Hill Brewery. "After it started taking hold in the U.S. my expectation was that something like this was going to happen here." 

On March 20th, 2020 the Mayor of Yuma announced the closing of all bars, dine-in restaurants, and essential businesses throughout Yuma. The Yuma County Board of Supervisors followed suit for the county. 

"The PPP funding has been absolutely essential. We applied when it was announced, we got in and we were funded the second day it was available. It has allowed me to continue to pay the staff and replenish the coffers because frankly, this is unprecedented," Wheeler said. 

But adapting from dine-in to take out only did not come easy for business. 

"It's gotten us by, it is band-aids on bullet holes, but that's all we can hope for," Wheeler explained. "The goal was to take care of the staff the best you could." 

Across the street from Prison Hill Brewery was a new restaurant in Downtown Yuma. Holy Smokes BBQ, it got its start a month before businesses were closed throughout the city. 

"We always like to store our acorns and now we don't have anything, so it is really by faith we are surviving," said Danielle Sundwell, owner of two businesses in downtown Yuma, Holy BBQ, and The Escape Room. "We know we have a pandemic going on but we know we are going to come out of it."

One agency that continues to advocate for hundreds of locally owned small businesses is the Yuma County Chamber of Commerce. An economic development agency aimed at helping and guiding businesses through roads of recovery. 

"We have been doing almost an email blast daily, whenever there is new guidance to our chamber members, when there are new rules, here are re-opening tips and reopening procedures, reopening guidelines," John Courtis, Executive Director with the Chamber of Commerce said."From retail to restaurants to hair salons to bars." 

The Chamber communicates with hundreds of its businesses and hears the pent up frustration, anxiety, and nervousness centered around re-opening, according to Courtis. 

"We have been trying to manage the emotions on both sides of this. Don't open, open now, you are opening too soon, you shouldn't open at all, you should have opened up yesterday," he said.

However Courtis says some won't be able to reopen and it's no fault of their own. 

"We are probably going to lose a few restaurants, several just didn't have two or three months of available cash on hand to keep going," said Courtis. 

However, if one thing is not to be forgotten, it's Yuma's community backing. 

"The signs that say Yuma Strong are real. Yuma has always gone through a lot of issues over the years and we always come out ahead and we always come out OK," Gale said.