The federal government will try again on Saturday to accept applications for COVID-19 relief grants from independent movie theaters, concert halls and other live performance spaces after the application portal crashed on its first day two weeks ago.
The U.S. Small Business Administration said Thursday night its Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, or SVOG, will reopen April 24, and hopefully accept its first applications.
SBA was forced to shut down the SVOG application portal because of “technical issues” hours after it opened on April 9. However, on Thursday the agency said it had “completed rigorous testing” to ensure the portal’s reliability.
SBA also said venue operators may obtain an account in advance by going to sba.gov/svogrant. Updated information about the program was to be released on Friday, the agency said.
The SVOG was created by Congress and then-President Donald Trump in December to provide up to $10 million per venue that was closed by governments to slow the coronavirus’ spread a year ago. More than $16.2 billion is available to help venues recover from big revenue losses in 2020.
SBA has estimated it will receive 15,000 SVOG applications; it expects the size of the average grant to be $1 million.
This is second time in about a year that one of the agency’s application portals for COVID-relief grants has crashed.
In March 2020, the portal for Economic Injury Disaster Loans, or EIDL, repeatedly froze and crashed under the weight of thousands of users. The portal was shut down for days after the personal information of more than 7,900 applicants was exposed to other applicants who were using the site at the same time, according to an October report by SBA Inspector General Hannibal “Mike” Ware.
James T. Madore writes about Long Island business news including the economy, development, and the relationship between government and business. He previously served as Albany bureau chief.
