Santa Ana : Shopping Center Fire Victims Offered Loans

City officials have secured federal disaster loans of up to $500,000 for the victims of a July fire that gutted the 17 businesses within the Pioneer Town shopping center on 17th Street.

Hank Cunningham, assistant director for economic development in Santa Ana, said the loans--administered through the Small Business Administration--can reach a maximum of $500,000 for each tenant of the shopping center and will carry an interest rate of 4%. The city is also using some of its own federal block-grant money to supply each tenant with unsecured loans of up to $10,000 to help pay for any losses not covered by the tenants’ insurance and is working with the shopping center owner to obtain between $3 million and $4 million in tax-exempt industrial development bonds to rebuild the center.

Several tenants of the shopping center are temporarily housed in trailers in a parking lot next to the center.

Two-hundred residents were evacuated in the July blaze, which caused between $3 million and $5 million in damage, according to Fire Department estimates. Cunningham said that it was one of the worst commercial fires in the city’s history.