The Ocean Avenue News - oceanavenuenews.comThe NYC Department of Small Business Services awarded $2.8 million to 32 Brooklyn organizations to support local businesses.
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani is allocating a large chunk of an $8.4 million small-business grant package toward strengthening merchant groups and business improvement districts, and, in some neighborhoods, laying the groundwork for new merchant organizations along New York City’s commercial corridors.
The grants announced Monday by Mamdani and the Department of Small Business Services will also pay for street cleaning, lighting, public art, wayfinding, marketing and other neighborhood improvements across the five boroughs.
City Hall estimates the funding will support community-based organizations serving more than 20,000 small businesses. Mamdani said the grants are meant to complement the administration’s push to reduce regulatory burdens by making commercial corridors more attractive to customers.
“Our administration knows it’s not enough to make it easier to open a small business, you have to make it easier to visit one too,” Mamdani said.
Brooklyn will receive the largest borough share, with about $2.77 million across 32 grants. The Bronx will receive $1.55 million, Manhattan about $1.53 million, Queens about $1.51 million and Staten Island $550,000. Another $500,000 will go to seven organizations providing services citywide.
A recipient-by-recipient breakdown provided by SBS shows some of the money going toward merchant organizing, while other awards are designated for BID development.
In Greenpoint, the Brooklyn Alliance, the economic development arm of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, will receive $100,000 for merchant organizing.
Randy Peers, co-chair of the Five Borough Jobs Campaign, said the Brooklyn Alliance will use the money to organize merchants in Greenpoint, which currently has neither a BID nor a merchant association.
“The work that we’re going to be doing up there [Greenpoint] is really organizing the merchants and get them on a path towards developing a merchant association,” said Peers.
Other merchant-organizing grants will support work in Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Bay Ridge and Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn; Kingsbridge and Riverdale in the Bronx; the East Village in Manhattan; and Rosedale, Richmond Hill and Rockaway Park in Queens.
A separate set of awards is designated for BID development. Community League of the Heights in Washington Heights, Davidson Community Center in Burnside and Maspeth Chamber of Commerce will each receive $100,000.
Friends of Bogardus Plaza will receive $100,000 in Tribeca, while Carnegie Hill Neighbors, Gowanus Canal Conservancy and Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn will each receive $75,000. Little Haiti BK and Staten Island Chamber of Commerce will each receive $50,000.
Peers told amNewYork that grants such as these can benefit entire commercial strips because relatively small awards can fund improvements or organizing that reaches many businesses rather than one storefront at a time.
Other grants announced Monday are aimed at physical improvements. Hometown Security Laboratories will receive $100,000 for lighting in Hunts Point, Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition will receive $100,000 for lighting in Kingsbridge Heights and The W.O.W. Project will receive $100,000 for lighting in Chinatown.
Public-realm and neighborhood-navigation grants will also support projects in West Harlem, Downtown Jamaica, Red Hook and around Chinatown and the Civic Center.
The largest individual award is $426,359 to Union Settlement for work in East Harlem. Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership in Fort Greene and Red Hook Business Alliance will each receive $200,000, while La Colmena and West Brighton Community Local Development Corporation will each receive $150,000.
Seven organizations will split $500,000 in citywide organizational-development grants, including Art on the Ave, Center for Urban Pedagogy, Coro Leadership Center and Project for Public Spaces.
Peers said merchant organizations can provide infrastructure that lasts beyond the immediate grant period. Pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said corridors that fared best were those that already had a BID or merchant association on the ground.
The grants are the latest piece of Mamdani’s broader small-business agenda.
Last month, the mayor announced “OPEN for Small Business,” a package of more than 50 regulatory reforms aimed at reducing paperwork and bureaucratic burdens. The Five Borough Jobs Campaign welcomed the package but said it would continue pushing toward a goal Mamdani embraced during his campaign: cutting small-business fines and fees by 50%.
Peers said Monday that the administration was “off to a really good start” and called its regulatory reform effort “a very good first step,” while saying businesses still need an affordability agenda of their own.
He pointed to rising labor, utility, rent and insurance costs, saying nearly every major cost category facing small businesses has increased over the past five years.
