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'I would feel comfortable opening': Business owners ready to safely open doors

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster said a team is working on a plan to reopen the economy safely and quickly.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — An end to the economic shutdown is in sight.

That's what South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster said in a press conference Thursday, adding that we could see businesses reopening by May 1.

RELATED: SC Governor expects economy will be 'humming' by end of June

"I think we'll have businesses opening back up sometime in May and humming by the end of June," said McMaster.

As some small business owners told News 19, they're ready to open their doors.

"I would feel comfortable opening. I think as business owners we would need to put standards and precautions in place to keep ourselves, our customers and our staff safe," said Heather Burns, Owner of Revente, Sid & Nancy and Revente's Second Chances.

Packed parking lots and the daily hustle and bustle of Columbia's Five Points could be returning soon.

"May would be exciting. People, if it's safe for them to go out and move around, spend some money and get people back to work," said Brian Glynn, owner of Village Idiot Pizza.

As the state awaits for a drop in coronavirus cases, paired with a safe plan to reopen the economy, small businesses are doing what they can to survive.

Revente's last day open was March 21. Since they're a non-essential business, sales moved online.

"I'm doing [work] most of the time at night by myself after the kids go to sleep," said Burns. "So I'm taking the pictures [of the clothes and accessories], editing them, listing the items on the website, then putting them on Instagram and Facebook."

Burns is offering layaway options for customers and safely meeting with consigners to get new inventory.

Challenges aside, Burns is grateful to have formed a bond with fellow entrepreneurs.

"I will definitely say, especially for Saluda Avenue, this has brought us all closer together," said Burns. "We have a text message thread that has everybody on our street, all of us that have the same landlord. We're texting back and forth and checking in with each other."

May 1 marks 28 years of business for Revente.

Village Idiot Pizza, celebrating 30 years of business, closed their Five Points location for the time being.

"Right now, we're still in survival mode," said owner, Brian Glynn. "Right now, we're able to keep who we still have employed and pay the bills for right now. We're a lot better off than a lot of people are."

They're doing curbside and delivery-only from their remaining two restaurants. Going into the pandemic, 30% of Village Idiot's overall business was pickup and delivery.

"You wake up, you fight through that day, you go to sleep and you wake up and do it again," said Glynn. "We'll just keep doing that until we can't anymore or someone wants to come buy a couple of pizza places and I retire."

With the absence of students, Five Points especially is hurting.

"They're not coming back until hopefully August, but maybe not until next January," said Glynn. "Our Five Points location and our Olympia location, March and April are our two busiest months of the year and those are months we use to get us through the slow times during the summer."

Now, there's a glimmer of hope for many small businesses in the state following an announcement by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

"Today we have done in 14 days what it has taken SBA 14 years to do. We've put out $350 billion in funding to small businesses across the nation. In South Carolina, we've done north of $2.8 billion with 14,273 applications that we've taken," said Gregg White, District Director for the South Carolina District Office of the SBA.

The purpose of these funds is to have employers bring back employees and get back to business.

It's a bittersweet moment. While many are receiving help, the SBA says funding for the Economic Injury Disaster Loans and the guaranteed Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) closed down - at least for now.

RELATED: Small business lending program on hold after reaching lending limit

Both Burns and Glynn are awaiting financial assistance from the PPP.

"We're just gonna sit back and wait for Congress to do their thing and hopefully we'll get some additional funding so we can support these small businesses during the rest of this disaster," said White.

Visit Treasury.gov for the Paycheck Protection Program application or SBA.gov/disaster. Both programs are on the SBA's website.

If you have a loan from the SBA that's either a 7(a) or 504 loan, payments for the next six months have been deferred automatically.

99% of the businesses in South Carolina are small businesses, creating over half the jobs in the state.

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