Long Island day care center, children's gym to use $25,000 grant for upgrades

Standing in the backyard of her home-based day care center in North Babylon last Friday, Yohaina Martinez had no idea how much her business' fortune was about to change.

The 41-year-old is one of two small-business owners on Long Island who was awarded $25,000 each last week from Optimum Business and the Long Island Association Foundation to help grow their new businesses.

Martinez, a licensed day care operator who owns Little Feet Big Steps Daycare, said she plans to use the money to convert her home business' furnace from oil to gas after it broke last winter.

The money is "going to help us to better serve our families, it’s going to create a much safer environment for our kids," Martinez said. Her center has about 16 children and employs one part-time and two full-time employees.

Small businesses, which account for 90% of all businesses on Long Island according to U.S. Census data, have been facing headwinds since the pandemic when many were forced to close their doors. Now, inflation and supply chain issues have increased costs and even a small injection of cash can make a difference, local experts said. 

Martinez, who launched Little Feet Big Steps in 2023, received the funding through Optimum and the LIA's LOCAL Small Business Grants program, which the supports Long Island businesses that have 10 or fewer employees. The LOCAL program, in its second year, awards smaller $5,000 grants to a large number of local businesses, but gives two grand prizes of $25,000 to two local small businesses. 

This year, the program awarded 40 businesses — half in Nassau, half in Suffolk — $5,000 each for improvement or expansion projects.

Matt Cohen, president and CEO of the Long Island Association business group, said, “Most of these small businesses have taken gut punch after gut punch starting with COVID." The group’s charitable arm, the LIA Foundation, selected the winners.

Recipients of grant funding needed to demonstrate financial need and submit a detailed explanation on how they would spend the money.

Recipients of the smaller grants received funds in June.

Even $5,000 can mean the difference between buying needed equipment or taking on more debt, experts said.

“When you’re talking about $25,000, it really can make an impact,” said Erica Chase-Gregory, director of the Small Business Development Center at Farmingdale State College.

Chase-Gregory helped the LIA Foundation narrow down the pool of hundreds of applicants.

"We’re proud to invest in these grants as they help strengthen local businesses and fuel the kind of innovation and growth that makes Long Island prosper,” Andrew Rainone, senior vice president of national sales at Optimum, said in a statement.

Freeport Ninja Academy in Freeport also received a $25,000 grant from the Optimum and LIA partnership, which will help the business make needed upgrades.

When Kathryn Gawrych, 32, opened the academy in January 2020, things started strong, with parents signing their children up for additional classes. The facility offers obstacle course training for kids and adults, similar to NBC’s "American Ninja Warrior."

But nine weeks after she opened her business, COVID-19 lockdowns began, and the indoor gym was required to close its doors to the public for four months. But the bills continued to pile up, Gawrych said.

Though the business recovered and she opened a second location in Smithtown in 2022, the pandemic’s impact lingers.

“For the last five years we’ve been in survival mode,” she said. “Four months of full closure…it’s really hard to recover from that.”

Now, with the grant, she can replace aging equipment and add new obstacles for students.

“It’s something we desperately need that’ll make a huge difference in this facility,” she said.