{"id":213,"date":"2018-06-29T04:52:20","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T04:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/?p=213"},"modified":"2018-06-29T16:55:33","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T16:55:33","slug":"mayors-trolley-tour-touts-small-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/mayors-trolley-tour-touts-small-businesses\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor&#8217;s Trolley Tour Touts Small Businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The annual Mayor on Main trolley tours are in full swing, hoping to elevate the voices of neighborhood entrepreneurs and their businesses.<\/p>\n<p>While insulated from the street by a curb of eager reporters and an entourage of city officials, Boston\u2019s Mayor Walsh, dressed casually and, with a cup of \u201cDunk\u2019s\u201d joe in hand, mingled with constituents and sampled local restaurant foods. The brevity of each visit did not detract from the mayor\u2019s message, though: Boston is a city with \u201crevitalize[ed] neighborhood commercial districts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The 22-year-old tradition recognizes the growth of small businesses and their contribution to economic development on main streets. The mayor and city officials will be visiting a total of 12 main streets districts over four days, presenting Volunteer of the Year and Business of the Year awards to 40 recipients.<\/p>\n<p>The mayor\u2019s central office has designated 20 districts since the Boston Main Streets\u2019 conception in 1983, which have created 1,394 new businesses, 8,176 new jobs and expanded the program\u2019s reach with the establishment of the Office of Economic Development, one of Walsh\u2019s first actions as mayor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEconomic development is thinking about growing the city, not just the big companies that come to our city, but the small businesses,\u201d Walsh said on day one of his tour at the Bowdoin Geneva Main Street District.<\/p>\n<p>Cape Verdean Taste, the Bowdoin Geneva Main Streets Business of the Year award winner, represents small businesses that were not only brought to Boston but, as immigrant-owned establishments, were brought to the United States.<\/p>\n<p>The restaurant\u2019s owner, an Ethiopian entrepreneur, relied briefly on the Office\u2019s assistance and expressed her gratitude to the mayor Tuesday by donning traditional Ethiopian attire and the symbol of her tribe, two black lines painted onto each cheekbone.<\/p>\n<p>The creation of the Office of Economic Development, presented an opportunity to unify local businesses under \u201cone roof, one mission,\u201d and one leader, who is John Barros, Chief of Economic Development.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/F7N5BoS7uhg\" width=\"1331\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Barros noted that aid provided to Cape Verdean Taste exemplifies his office\u2019s responsibility to \u201cgently push [businesses] to do the right thing while trying to not adversely affect the business.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe troubleshooting that we do at the mayor\u2019s office now is much more sensitive to small businesses and their demands,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Barros, a former small business owner, used his first-hand knowledge of the struggles of local business owners to help rehabilitate Boston businesses. One measure of relief is the Neighborhood Access Loan Fund, which grants micro-loans of $5,000 up to $100,000 with five percent interest to financially insecure businesses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBusiness might be slow, or they&#8217;ve just started up and nobody is there and they&#8217;ve got to get the word out, whatever it is,\u201d Barros said. \u201cThose are the kinds of things we do to really meet small businesses\u2019 needs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The goal is to enable businesses to contribute positively to their communities, a process that can be deterred by financial difficulties. Setrena Curry, who facilitated Boston\u2019s Vietnamese New Year celebration, and 4 Corners Yoga and Wellness, which offers free yoga classes, received the Volunteer and Business of the Year awards respectively for affecting change in their district.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShop local,\u201d Walsh urged bystanders, reminding the crowd that, not only does the community rely on the \u201cvibrancy\u201d of local businesses, but \u201cMain Street success really depends upon the community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The annual Mayor on Main trolley tours are in full swing, hoping to elevate the voices of neighborhood entrepreneurs and their businesses. While insulated from the street by a curb of eager reporters and an entourage of city officials, Boston\u2019s Mayor Walsh, dressed casually and, with a cup of \u201cDunk\u2019s\u201d joe in hand, mingled with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"coauthors":[29],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":432,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehsjc.org\/therenaissance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}