Go to any community – from big cities to small towns – and at the heart you’ll find a place where people come together to experience live events, such as concerts, plays, a museum or a movie theater.
It’s the place where locals go Saturday night and parents take their kids, and it draws visitors from out of town. More than just about any other type of small business, these companies have suffered from a near-death blow by COVID-19. The federal government has thrown them a lifeline.
Applications for “Shuttered Venue Operator Grants” (SVOG) to help live event venues survive opened April 26, but small businesses that want a grant better hurry to apply. Although there’s $16.2 billion, these funds will run out, and soon.
“We were waiting to apply, and we were ready, we were prepared,” said Cathy Buck, owner of the Cameo Cinema, a 108-year-old, one-screen movie theater in Saint Helena, California, who applied the first day the Small Business Administration started taking applications. “We waited in the portal line for over three hours. We were 300th something in line.”
Cameo is California’s oldest continuously operated single-screen movie theater, but it was in danger of shutting its doors permanently. That would have been a grave loss. Though Saint Helena, at the center of Napa Valley, attracts tourists, Cameo Cinema primarily serves locals, many of whom work in the winery and tourist industries.
“Ninety percent of our customers are locals,” Buck said. “The Cameo revitalizes the downtown area. People who come to a movie will shop, eat at one of the local small restaurants.”
For Kevin Coleman, president of the board of the not-for-profit Cameo Cinema Foundation, which was set up to provide support for community events, Cameo is more than a theater.
“In addition to running movies, the Cameo has a program to teach filmmaking to young people, holds special series on important educational topics, runs ‘CinemaBites’ where a movie is paired with food from a local chef to highlight local restaurants,” Coleman said. “And the big event is the family film festival. It’s hard to imagine how if the Cameo disappeared that anything could replace it.”
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Like other venues throughout the country, the Cameo is struggling even after some COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. The Cameo received a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan in 2020 that enabled it to keep staff employed, but that didn’t pay enough of the bills.
“We may be open, but we are only seeing 25-30% occupancy,” Buck said. “We’re not seeing the capacity numbers like 2019. Where I might have grossed $40,000 a month, I’m seeing half that, but our fixed costs remain the same….
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