When the Battleship New Jersey closed on March 16 in response to the state’s shutdown order, the museum furloughed two-thirds of its staff. Now, over a month later, some of those employees will begin receiving a paycheck again.
The museum received $250,000 from the federal Paycheck Protection Program last week. The funds have allowed the museum to rehire four maintenance employees and increase the hours of the sixteen currently-employed staff members from 32 to 4o hours each week. Total personnel costs for the year were projected to amount to $2.2 million. The shutdown reduced this by nearly fifty percent. While the Paycheck Protection Program money has allowed the battleship to rehire some employees, the museum anticipates spending all the loan within two months. Museum CEO Phil Rowan explained, “if we spend all the loan money within eight weeks, which we hope to do, we won’t have to repay it because it will be forgiven.”
The Battleship New Jersey had also applied for a $2 million loan from the federal CARES act relief fund. However, the institution is still waiting to hear about the status of its application. In addition to federal aid, the battleship has raised more than $17,000 in individual donations to offset lost revenue during the shutdown, including $2,000 raised by the museum’s oldest volunteer John Quinesso of Vineland.
The battleship employed twenty-eight full-time employees and sixty part-time employees prior to the shutdown.