The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant was meant to help small independent venues, theaters and other entertainment spaces hit hard by the pandemic. But it's taken six months to get up and running.

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

We have been keeping a close eye on the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant. That is the 16 billion in federal aid money for independent clubs, theaters and other entertainment spaces that shut down during the pandemic. It was passed into law by former President Trump back in December, and only now are venue owners slowly starting to see that money. But as NPR's Andrew Limbong reports, emphasis on slowly.

ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Let's meet a couple of the lucky people first. Tyrus Joseforsky is a concert and music festival promoter in Indiana who owns Flight Levelz Entertainment. After six months of waiting for the Small Business Administration to get the program up and running, accept applications and start sending money out...

TYRUS JOSEFORSKY: I just made peace with the fact that it wasn't coming.

LIMBONG: Then, last week he got a notice from the SBA that his application had been approved. He filled out and signed some paperwork.

JOSEFORSKY: And then the next day, I received notice that my disbursement was scheduled. Now, that money hasn't hit my bank account yet. I have no idea how long that's going to take. I actually called...

LIMBONG: He called the SBA, who told them that it could take days or weeks. Steve Schoaps is in a similar boat. He's the owner of Strother Cinema, a two-screen movie theater in Seminole, Okla. He said the SBA told him he'd see the money the day after Memorial Day yesterday.

STEVE SCHOAPS: Yesterday came and went, still haven't seen it.

LIMBONG: But Schoaps and Joseforsky are the fortunate ones here. A spokesperson for the SBA said disbursements have gone out to people and will continue to go out as fast as possible. But most of the more than 13,000 applicants are like Lauren Wayne, the general manager of the State Theatre in Portland, Maine.

LAUREN WAYNE: Our process has been stuck in pending final review for a couple weeks now with no updates beyond that.

LIMBONG: Last summer, Wayne and her team decided to close their smaller sister venue, Port City Music Hall. And keeping the State Theatre afloat has been a struggle.

WAYNE: All that's keeping us in the business is advance ticket sales, and that's money needs to be in the bank.

LIMBONG: It's been a long, frustrating process for venue owners, especially as similar SBA programs, like the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, have worked smoothly. But Strother Cinema owner Steve Schoaps does cut the SBA some slack.

SCHOAPS: In the Small Business Administration's defense, this was a task that was thrown on them at the last second, and this was a monumental task because everybody was trying to get access to this.

LIMBONG: To back up a bit, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant was a never-been-done-before type project for the SBA, and there have been a couple of goofs. The day the application portal was first set to open, the site crashed. Once it did come back, users reported technical issues and confusing instructions, which is why Esther Baruh, the director of government relations for the National Association of Theatre Owners, is hoping for an appeals process for people who run into clerical issues.

ESTHER BARUH: I think a human reviewer could understand that and fix it and move the application through the process.

LIMBONG: No one at the SBA was available for an interview. But SBA Administrator Isabella Guzman did explain at a House committee hearing last week that some of the complexities behind the program were baked into the law.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ISABELLA GUZMAN: The program design dictated by statutes, you know, obviously had lots of controls for eligibility requirements.

LIMBONG: How do you make sure a giant corporation isn't getting the money? How do you tell the difference between a venue with a bar and a bar that sometimes has shows? One of the other rules of the program is that it's tiered. So businesses that lost 90% of their revenue get first priority, then come people who lost 70%, which sounds great. But for Tobi Parks, owner and artistic director of xBk in Des Moines, Iowa, being in Tier 2 means time and cash is running out, even as the country begins to open up and artists begin to tour.

TOBI PARKS: We don't have the ability to offer advances or put down guarantees or do anything like that until we know what kind of cash that we're dealing with because we have none.

LIMBONG: But artists need places like xBk to stick around. Otherwise, where else are they going to play?

Andrew Limbong, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.