Waltham Companies Received $273M In Federal Coronavirus Loans

Jenna Fisher
Updated ·3 min read

WALTHAM, MA — Companies and nonprofits in Waltham received $273 million in loan approvals under the federal Paycheck Protection Program, according to data released Tuesday by the Small Business Administration.

The loans went to some 1,246 companies across Waltham and ranged from $474 to $9.3 million to save some 15,839 jobs across the city.

At Healthy Waltham, where they were able to get nearly $15,000, the money helped keep staff employed so they could run weekly food pantries.

"One of the biggest things for us was to employ Waltham employees who either lost their job during COVID or were affected by COVID," Executive Director Myriam Michel said.

They were able to hire a Waltham resident who lost his job at The 99 restaurant and someone who lost her working at a lab at Harvard and two other Waltham residents, she said.

"It has helped us keep those people employed and do the work that we do," Michel said.

And that work, which includes staffing weekly food pantries and working as a resource for other smaller organizations, does not look set to slow down any time soon.

"As the months grew by the need started to increase," Michel said. "We used to be serving 500 and then 600 people and now it's teetering around 750 people. It's grown steadily."

The data released this week includes all loans under the program passed in March as the coronavirus pandemic took hold and forced widespread business closures and layoffs. SBA released some loan data in July, but that data only showed loans over $150,000 and did not include specific dollar amounts.

The Washington Post, Bloomberg and other media companies sued the SBA to release the full data set. In November, a federal judge ruled in favor of the media companies and ordered the SBA to release the data by Dec. 1. The data released Tuesday was current as of Nov. 24 and includes updates to the data released in July.

PPP loans are part of the CARES Act, a comprehensive COVID-19 relief package Congress passed in the spring. The loans are forgivable as long as a certain percentage is used for payroll. The program stopped taking new applications in August, but business groups are pressuring federal lawmakers and the Trump administration to renew the program.

In Waltham, top the loans went to:

"The government did the right thing in helping small businesses do this, however a lot of these businesses are still getting hit hard," Michel said. "Small businesses are part of the fabric of America. Our government needs to do a little bit more so we're not having a lot more of those 'closed for business' signs pop up."

Statewide, there were nearly 118,000 loans totaling $14.27 billion. In their loan applications, the companies that received the loans said they would help protect 1.17 million jobs in Massachusetts.

Patch has reached out to several businesses including, NWN, Thomas Gallagher Inc, Cadmus Holding, Boston IVF.

Jenna Fisher is a news reporter for Patch. Got a tip? She can be reached at Jenna.Fisher@patch.com or by calling 617-942-0474. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram (@ReporterJenna). Have a something you'd like posted on the Patch? Here's how.

This article originally appeared on the Waltham Patch