(ABC 6 News) – After struggling to make ends meet for the last five months, businesses in LeRoy impacted by construction on Highway 56, which runs right through the middle of town, are getting a boost from the county.

Sweets Hotel and Restaurant is one of about 20 businesses you would find along Highway 56, if you could drive it.

Right now, however, the city is a maze of back alleys, detours, side roads and, in one case, a field, that keeps customers away.

“A Friday or Saturday night, we could easily put 150-200 people through this business,” said Sweets owner, Luan Overocker. “Since construction started, we’re doing 40 and 50 people on a Friday and Saturday night. So the numbers are way down.”

Many of the businesses, you have to go through back entrances, or walk through alleyways to get to the front door.

One business had their entrance completely blocked off for weeks at a time, forcing them to use an adjacent field they own to bring people in, and let students on the north side of town access the local school without having to be driven almost five miles around the town to get to the south side.

It’s caused problems beyond just making things hard to get to – it’s almost shut some businesses down.

“During Covid I locked the doors for four months,” Overocker said, “and I was really, seriously thinking about doing that these last four months because things have down so bad and your bills keep coming in and things keep happening.”

Thankfully, there’s been support.

The Le Roy Foundation stepped up early on and supplied many of the businesses with grants to help them with bills and utilities.

“We have a great community here,” Overocker said. “They’re always doing the best they can to help out anybody.”

And now, Mower County, with the help of Development Corporation of Austin, is stepping in to offer businesses forgivable loans of $5,000-$10,000 to prop them up until the construction is complete.

“These businesses have been closed, their revenue has been massively impacted, they’ve had to pay rent, they’ve been having to pay utilities,” said Aaron Keenan, principal consultant for the DCA. “All these different things that exist for a business that don’t go away whether you have revenue or not.”

Over the next three years, the businesses who qualify won’t have to pay back the full loan – just the interest.

“We don’t want to give them a loan where they’re going to have to pay the full principal back, because that’s just part of another expense,” said Keenan.

Hopefully, that’ll be enough to keep the lights on a little longer.

“It’s been a tough five months here to get the help we need and hopefully we just keep getting through it,” said Overocker.

The DCA and local economic development groups will meet with businesses on October 11 to help them work through the application process, which requires a record of revenue from the last two years to compare with this past summer.

They’re hoping to get money into the hands of business owners the following week.