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Seattle’s
El Centro de la Raza
legacy helping all y r u t n e c race lfa h s A BY JOHN STEARNS
Heritage Bank pulled off a miracle approving Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding for El Centro de la Raza during the pandemic, according to the Seattle nonprofit’s executive director, Estela Ortega. El Centro de la Raza (The Center for People of All Races) had deposited some fundraising proceeds at Heritage a couple years before the pandemic, but it had no lending relationship with the bank. Desperate to access PPP funding early in the pandemic after an unsuccessful online registration attempt with another bank, Ortega called a Heritage banker about 9:00 a.m. one April 2020 morning. El Centro was approved for a PPP loan the next morning. She didn’t forget the bank’s quick, staff-securing assistance to the organization, which offers 43 programs for children, youth, families and seniors in nine categories: advocacy and culture, benefits and resource navigation, child and family services, financial empowerment, food and health, housing, small business services, workforce development and youth services. When El Centro de la Raza was weighing equal loan proposals from Heritage and another lender for the nonprofit’s next affordable housing project, an 87-unit multifamily development in south Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood, the PPP experience tipped the balance. “I had a choice between Heritage Bank and another bank, and what Heritage Bank did for us under the PPP loan, I said, ‘We’ve got to go with Heritage Bank,’” Ortega said. In April 2023, Heritage CEO, Jeff Deuel, referenced that loan in the bank’s first quarter earnings release, saying Heritage was providing construction financing totaling $35.1 million and $9.4 million of permanent financing for the project. In addition to affordable housing, the project also will build an office for a local nonprofit, a church to redevelop the longstanding Columbia City Church of Hope and a new child care center for El Centro de la Raza, Deuel said.
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Issue 11 | 2023 Q4
Banking Business a publication of Heritage Bank
