QUESTION
What grants or support are available to attract businesses to areas with high storefront vacancy rates?
1:15:30
·
110 sec
The Department of Small Business Services (SBS) provides storefront improvement grants to community partners, which include tools and best practices for engaging landlords to activate vacant storefronts.
- These grants aim to address high vacancy challenges in specific commercial corridors
- The grants help minimize the negative impact of vacant storefronts on quality of life
- Tactics like repurposing spaces or pop-up activations are used
- Council Member Feliz expresses interest in exploring additional grants for businesses willing to invest in high-vacancy, high-risk areas
- He highlights the difficulties small businesses face opening in areas with numerous vacant storefronts and associated quality of life issues
Oswald Feliz
1:15:30
In some commercial corridors, the vacant store front problem is so severe that it makes it almost impossible for any business to wanna come there.
1:15:38
Just imagine opening up or trying to open up a business in a block with 4 other vacant storefronts.
1:15:44
Just imagine how the foot foot traffic is in that community and also quality of life issues.
1:15:49
In that community could make it almost impossible for any business to wanna come there.
1:15:54
So I don't know if I'll count member brewer indirectly asked this question.
1:15:58
But any grant available to encourage businesses to come to neighborhoods that have some type of storefront biggest storefront emergency?
Calvin Brown
1:16:07
Well, I mean, our grants work with local community partners.
1:16:11
And in part of our grant programs, we do have a storefront improvement component.
1:16:16
So once they've done this assessment of their quarter, vacancies is one of their top challenges, we provide them with best practices and tools so that they can engage with those landlord landlords to try to activate those spaces.
1:16:29
Some of them are, you know, what was mentioned by council member, like, repurposing those spaces or doing pop ups in those spaces just to kinda minimize the the impact that has happened on a quality of life.
Oswald Feliz
1:16:43
Okay.
1:16:43
Well, I guess in the future, hope we could continue talking about potential grants that we could work on just to help businesses that won and best in areas that we could even call risky due to the high amount of vacant storefronts.
1:16:55
I mean, again, just imagine trying thinking about opening up a restaurant on in an area with high vacancy rates and also quality of flight issues in the community.
1:17:04
Right?
1:17:04
Nobody would want to come to that rational.
1:17:06
It'll be very difficult for any small business owner say, this is gonna be the community where I'm gonna invest my time and energy.
1:17:13
So, yeah, I look forward to continuing that conversation.
1:17:16
And I'll pass it on to Consumran Paladino for a second round of questions.
