Relief Aid Stalls With Small Businesses Returning Loans Unused

Peter Menzies got two coronavirus relief loans last month: one for a bookstore and the other for a restaurant. Now he’s returning the latter, the biggest by far at $125,000.

It’s not that he doesn’t need federal aid for his Reading Room restaurant in the hamlet of Katonah, New York, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Manhattan. Capacity limits mean he will lose too much money to justify reopening and rehiring 20 workers now. And the rules to turn the loan into a grant are so restrictive that when the period for using the funding ends on June 11, ...