Help for Local Small Businesses
10 Percent of Farmingdale Development Center's Clients are from Immediate Area
By Andrea Halpern
When the US Small Business Administration (SBA) was deciding in the early 1980's where to put its newly conceived small business development centers on Long Island, Farmingdale was chosen as one of two locations because the State University of New York (SUNY) at Farmingdale offered to host it. Today, an estimated 10 percent of the center's clients come from its own neighborhood - the greater Farmingdale area.
Because Farmingdale is situated on the border of Nassau and Suffolk, the center is accessible to entrepreneurs in both counties, and the facility has grown to attract people from across the Island. A few clients also travel from as far as Queens and Manhattan. However, the facility's large client base is primarily local.
"We're the busiest center in the whole state," the Farmingdale SBDC's director, Joseph Schwartz, recently said in an interview. "That's because Farmingdale has the most central location on Long Island." The center, which is one of 22 of its kind in New York State, sees 1200 clients and sponsors 20 to 25 workshops per year. "There are almost three million people on Long Island, and Farmingdale is at the geographic center of the activity," Schwartz noted, "The 110 corridor is a great place to be. It's like being in New York City and being on 42nd Street. I don't know if Farmingdale really realizes," he said.
The SBDC is funded by the SBA and New York State, and is administered by SUNY. The Farmingdale center is one of two on Long Island. The other is at SUNY Stony Brook. The Farmingdale center's key service is one-on-one counseling, which often helps clients prepare business plans and obtain loan packages for their fledgling companies.
In addition to helping companies survive infancy, a major function of the centers is to help small businesses reposition themselves to serve commercial rather than defense markets. This is key to helping local businesses in particular, according to Schwartz, who noted that these have not yet fully recovered from the late 1980's decline of the defense industry. "The erosion has not been completed yet," he said. Of the 1200 clients the Farmingdale SBDC helps, about 90 are manufacturers, according to Schwartz.
Most of the clients from the greater Farmingdale area are manufacturers rather than retailers, according to Schwartz. "Many of them came as the defense industry cut down. So we had many former employees from Grumman and Republic," he said. Schwartz noted, however, that it would also behoove Farmingdale's small retailers to use the center's services.
One way the SBDC is helping businesses who have been affected by the decline of defense industry is through its Defense Economic Transition Assistance (DETA) Program. Funded by a grant from the SBA, DETA focuses on helping small businesses in such New York areas as those surrounding the Plattsburgh Air Force Base, Griffiss Air Force Base in Utica-Rome, and the heavily defense contract-related businesses on Long Island.
The program not only helps Long Island businesses target commercial markets for their products, it makes loans of up to $1.25 million available to defense-dependent small businesses that want to retain jobs and create new ones. To be eligible, the applicant must show that at least a quarter of his or her prior fiscal year's revenue came from Department of Defense contracts, defense-related Department of Energy contracts, or subcontracts.
While the cost of operating the Farmingdale center is about $700,000, the New York State SBDC reports that, statewide, the agency helped small businesses invest over $100 million dollars in 1994. The agency relies on this economic impact to prove its worth. "We show our success by the success of our clients," said Schwartz.
One of the center's success stories comes from a local woman who was faced with the challenge of running her family's business after the sudden death of her husband. "She needed a business plan. It was something that happened abruptly, and she really didn't know how to run a business," said Schwartz, adding, "We helped her."