TESTIMONY
Jessica Walker, President of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, on Challenges and Solutions for Manhattan Storefronts
1:41:43
·
139 sec
Walker details the current state of Manhattan storefront industries. While restaurants are rebounding and tourism is growing, retail employment remains stagnant. She highlights major issues:
- Elevated vacancy rates exacerbated by illegal cannabis dispensaries, masking the true vacancy level
- Reduced demand due to the shift to e-commerce and remote work
- Retail theft
She outlines solutions implemented by the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce:
- The Small Business Resource Network program providing outreach to storefront businesses
- Launching a retail storefront accelerator to help e-commerce businesses transition to brick-and-mortar
- Strategies to increase foot traffic and demand, including supporting casinos and major art installations
Jessica Walker
1:41:43
Hi, and thank you so much for having me and for doing this this important hearing.
1:41:47
I am Jessica Walker, the president of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce.
1:41:50
We are a business organization representing businesses of all sizes.
1:41:55
I'll try to be brief here.
1:41:56
In February, we held a summit all about what was happening with Manhattan storefronts And in terms of the major storefront industries, what our experts told us is that restaurants are rebounding.
1:42:07
Tourism continues to grow.
1:42:09
But retail employment is really where things are flat, and that really is the target here.
1:42:15
In terms of the elevated vacancy rates in Manhattan of a few things.
1:42:19
1, the impact of illegal weed shops is masking the the vacancy levels.
1:42:23
We think that it's actually much higher.
1:42:26
And we do support the closure of these illegal shops.
1:42:28
But when that does happen, we're gonna see even more vacancy, obviously.
1:42:34
This is all happening.
1:42:35
The vacancies in Manhattan is happening for 2 major reasons.
1:42:39
1, reduced demand.
1:42:41
Obviously businesses need customer customers.
1:42:43
And that for retail is because of the move to ecommerce and also the move to remote work, especially in Manhattan.
1:42:51
The other major reason which has come up today is retail theft.
1:42:54
Happy to talk more about that.
1:42:56
In terms of solutions, some of the things that we wanna point out, 1, our chamber along with the other Burrow White Chambers has been running a program called Small Business Resource Network since October 2020.
1:43:09
It has done door to door outreach, mostly to storefront businesses, and it's a great program.
1:43:14
We're seeking a restoration of funding in the city budget.
1:43:18
2, the our chamber is now launching a retail storefront accelerator because we're seeing a surge of entrepreneurs ship.
1:43:26
The goal here is to try to take those successful ecommerce businesses and help them open a successful brick and mortar shop in Manhattan.
1:43:35
Now applications are open now.
1:43:36
Happy to talk more about that.
1:43:38
And then the final recommendation is around ways to increase foot traffic and demand, especially because we're starting to see our tourism come back in terms of people from other states and other countries, we really think we wanna focus on local and regional residents And so there are certain things we support casinos, we support major art installations like the gates, which was very successful.
1:44:01
Happy to answer any questions.
