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Business
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Monday, 16 November 2009 04:17 |
Agencies that help small businesses say they need more assistance, not less, in hard times.
By Aaron Stern
Four years ago Ruth Hoekwater decided to quit her non-profit job and pursue a lifelong dream of owning a neighborhood coffee shop, but she needed help. That’s where the Rogers Park Business Alliance came in. They helped her find retail space, put her in touch with a commercial realtor who helped her negotiate her lease, and even helped her choose the name The Common Cup.
A few weeks ago three customers were assaulted outside The Glenwood, a Rogers Park bar with a substantial gay clientèle. In the wake of that incident the Rogers Park Business Alliance contacted 24th District police to ensure the incident would be classified as a hate crime, then helped Glenwood owner Renee Labrana find security cameras to install outside the bar’s entrance.
“They are the cement behind the businesses in the neighborhood,” said Labrana. “Anytime anybody needs something… they have the ability to come in contact with everybody; they can put people in touch with each other, to do the things they need to get done.”
A proposed cut in city funding to community and economic development agencies could make such collaborative success stories harder to come by in the future. Mayor Richard M. Daley’s 2010 fiscal budget proposes to slash funding for the Department of Community Development, including a 21.5 percent decrease in assistance to delegate agencies like the Rogers Park Business Alliance and groups with similar missions.
“Chicago’s delegate agencies are the city’s primary means of support for small local businesses and neighborhood commercial and industrial districts,” says an open letter released Wednesday, Nov. 11 and signed by 40 Chicago neighborhood chambers of commerce, development corporations and local economic organizations.
“The city calls these groups ‘delegate agencies’ because the city delegates to them a significant portion of its economic development efforts.”
The letter is the first formal salvo from the business community in a push-back against the proposed cuts, an effort being led by the Rogers Park Business Alliance. Most delegate agencies are small, neighborhood-specific outfits, though a few are city-wide. They receive city and federal funds and rely heavily on membership dues, fundraisers and private grants.
Sources of private income have dried up drastically in the last two years, meaning that these organizations need more help – not less – from the city, said Kimberly Bares, executive director of the Rogers Park Business Alliance. Larger groups like hers would be hindered by the cuts, but for smaller organizations staffed by one or two people the proposal could be fatal.
“We don’t have a lot of places we can cut,” said Molly Sullivan, of the city’s Department of Community Development. Charged from above to tighten their belt, her department was forced to make difficult decisions. The 21.5 percent cut will be made evenly among all delegate agencies. That approach was chosen as an alternative to determining which weaker agencies could be eliminated altogether, Sullivan said.
“It’s a rock and a hard place until the economy comes around but this seems like a particularly stupid cut,” said Betsy Vandercook, Chief of Staff for 49th Ward Alderman Joe Moore, whom Vandercook said would oppose the cut at public budget hearings on Nov. 18. The proposal failed to recognize that cutting funding for these agencies would mean more work – not less – for the city.
“Look at the store fronts that are starting to go empty. It’s ridiculous,” she said. “It’s a terrible cut.”
When Hoekwater and her husband moved to Rogers Park nearly ten years ago they lived equidistant to the Jarvis and Morse Red Line El stops. They quickly determined that Jarvis was a far safer option. A decade later she is proud that the Common Cup played a hand in transforming Morse Avenue near the El.
She credits much of the surrounding economic growth to the Rogers Park Business Alliance and worries what would happen should their ability to deliver services be crippled.
“I think all of the potential development that’s been happening… could stop, potentially,” she said. “Who else is going to do that? Who else is going to be specifically trying to bring businesses and money into Rogers Park?
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