Minneapolis Review

As buildings in Minneapolis continue to be damaged and looted by riots protesting police brutality, a small business owner shares how city leadership has failed to listen to small businesses. 

“Small business has been suffering in our city for a decade under crippling regulations,” Morgan Luzier, co-founder of Balance Fitness Studio and co-chair of the LynLake Small Business Association, told the Minneapolis Review. “We were on the precipice of demise before the shutdowns.” 

Luzier said small businesses have had to absorb high commercial property taxes and fees, on top of feeling abandoned when the city focused its efforts on Minneapolis 2040, the city’s comprehensive plan, without helping small businesses adjust.  

“Of course we support that vision, but today we are still in a reality that depends on automobile traffic and the commerce that it brings to our commercial nodes,” Luzier said. “The city abandoned small businesses as we begged for a plan that helped us bridge the gap between the auto-independent world of tomorrow with the auto-dependent world of today.” 

Luzier said business associations have lacked enough funding to be able to advocate for themselves.

“Recently, we have relied heavily on a few successful groups like Whittier Alliance and the Lake Street Council during COVID and the riots, but they can’t represent every business node in south Minneapolis,” Luzier said. “The city ought not have defunded our business associations.” 

Luzier said small businesses support workers’ rights, paid sick leave and increases in minimum wage, but they did not receive any assistance from the city. 

“When we asked the city for exceptions for small businesses or programs to help support the increase in cost, we were again told to figure it out,” Luzier said. “I'm sad to say that our demise was preventable, if only our leadership were listening to us before corona and the riots.”