One of Brookfield’s best known golf clubs will have to pay $1.25 million to the federal government after they improperly became the recipients of a Paycheck Protection Program loan in March of 2021.
Westmoor Country Club received the federal funding during the Covid-19 pandemic. The PPP loans were created as a lifeline for small businesses at a time when large parts of the economy were shut down. The small, forgivable lions were set up as a way for businesses to keep paying employees despite the pandemic’s effect on revenue losses.
The PPP loans were designed to have extremely low interest rates and be fully backed by the federal government. They would also be forgivable if the businesses mainly on payroll and other particular approved expenses such as rent, utilities, and mortgage interest.
According to a public data base, Westmoor Country Club received a PPP loan of $755,471 which was forgiven in late July of 2021.
However, because the club limited its membership not in relation to capacity and safety concerns, the business was not found to be eligible for the PPP loan. Westmoor was a private establishment with a membership requirement during the pandemic and the loan application period.
The settlement was announced on Monday, December 15 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Under the terms of the settlement, Westmoor Country Club has not admitted to liability and no court has ruled to determine any liability.
A statewide summary from the SBA concluded that 187,818 PPP loans were given out in the state of Wisconsin. This amounted to someone around $14.2 billion in total initial approval amount, which extended through June 30 of 2020. A later segment showed an addition of 32,000 loans that amounted to about $2.38 billion more.
Most of the loans throughout the state were small, and primarily stayed under the $150,000 range, with very few businesses receiving more than a million dollars. Only about 1,600 businesses in the state received over $1,000,000, accounting for just around 1% of the state’s total PPP loans. This data aligns with most of the rest of the nation’s, as around 86% of all PPP loans throughout the country were under $150,000.
