City of Minneapolis issued the following announcement on Sept. 3.
As these unprecedented times test our resilience, staff across the City are working on strategic resources to begin the long path toward recovery. Since the start of the pandemic, the City’s economic development team has helped our business community start to recover through expertise, funding and adapting processes.
Overall, the City’s economic development team has connected with more than 2,000 businesses, provided more than 3,000 hours of direct customer assistance directly or through service contracts, changed licensing and regulatory processes to save businesses $1.4 million, and helped business access more than $3 billion in funding since the start of the pandemic.
Some highlights of our work:
Expertise
- The Small Business Team has fielded 650 calls since the beginning of April to connect businesses to resources. The team has reached out to cultural malls and damaged commercial areas and done research as part of establishing the Small Business Administration’s disaster declaration.
- Increased resources to community-based partners and modified program guidelines provided technical assistance supporting 645 businesses. The service helped navigate employee issues, triage outstanding expenses, negotiate payments with creditors and apply for relief funds.
- Our partners helped food establishments adapt their business models with online ordering and delivery, online sale of gift certificates, etc.
- The City committed a total of $500,000 to 10 community-based business organizations in pandemic specific funding.
- Made 173 loans totaling $1.55 million to businesses in targeted areas to increase equitable results. Around 70% of loan recipients identified as non-white with borrowers identifying as Black/African American as the largest overall recipient group at 42% of total loans.
- The program provided $5,000 or $10,000 loans of flexible funding to meet immediate working capital needs such as payroll and employee benefits, rent or mortgage payments, accounts payable and payments due to supply chain.
- Besides direct funds, our business teams helped businesses access funding from County, State and federal resources for a total (including the City funds) of almost 14,000 businesses receiving more than $3 billion.
- The City business assistance teams relaxed permit fees and fee collections, saving businesses a collective $1.4 million.
- The City streamlined reopening for 112 businesses expanding outdoors and reopening in early June by creating a guide; modifying processes and ordinances; and coordinating with the State of Minnesota, Metropolitan Council and Metro Transit.
- City staff rooted the opening plan in racial equity and identified those impacted most by having roundtables with restaurants, labor leaders and community-based groups; and completing a racial equity impact assessment to flag barriers to the business owners and needs of the workers.
Original source can be found here.
Alerts Sign-up