It may be hard to think of the many rundown and abandoned houses that have tarnished Providence’s neighborhoods in the context of small business and entrepreneurship, but Mayor Jorge O. Elorza sees a connection.
Perhaps drawing upon his background as a housing-law professor at Roger Williams University in Providence and as a judge at the city’s housing court, Elorza led efforts during his first term in office to rehabilitate nearly 400 blighted properties around Providence with the EveryHome program.
“Since its inception, the program has successfully brought 387 properties back to productive use,” said the Democratic mayor. “This has been achieved through policy changes in the [city] Department of Inspection and Standards, efforts in the housing court, receivership, transfer affidavits, improved market trends and private renovations.”
He sees the EveryHome program, as well as a string of unrelated new housing projects underway in or near downtown, as having positive ripple effects on the local economy, especially for small businesses.
“I hear frequently that it’s residential development, not economic development. I disagree with that,” said Elorza, who grew up in Olneyville and now lives in Silver Lake on Providence’s West Side. “When you look at the kinds of cities that have booming and thriving, knowledge-based and tech-based economies, it’s the ones that integrate live-work space. It’s residential, it’s retail, it’s commercial – all in a concentrated space.”
The two other mayoral candidates in November’s election – both independents – don’t share all of Elorza’s views on the health of Providence’s small-business sector.
‘When a company is looking to open in the area, they don’t come to City Hall, they go to the state.’
DIANNE “DEEDEE” WITMAN, independent mayoral candidate
Dianne “DeeDee” Witman, an East Side resident who has been active in political fundraising and philanthropy, and Jeff Lemire, a handyman with experience in the construction business who now lives on the city’s blue-collar South Side, said the city should be doing more for conventional types of small businesses – those that aren’t part of Providence’s active nightlife scene.
Elorza has embraced the proliferation of restaurants and bars in Providence, saying it creates a night scene that draws people downtown and encourages them to explore the city.
Witman, however, takes a more-cautious stance. Nightclubs, she said, may be more trouble than they are worth because of the potential for “collateral damage” from disturbances and other trouble.
Witman said the city should focus on creating a better climate for small businesses that don’t have anything to do with nightlife. “I don’t see more small businesses here” than in years past, she added.
Lemire says the city could be doing more for small businesses. For example, he said, the city should look at decreasing or eliminating its inventory tax on small businesses. He said such expenses have limited the number and types of small businesses in Providence.
“How many new car dealerships do you see in Providence?” he asked rhetorically.
Perhaps one of the most impactful things that Elorza has championed for small businesses has been changes to the city’s licensing and permitting system to make the process faster and easier for merchants, particularly by reducing paperwork and providing services online.
[caption id="attachment_228125" align="alignleft" width="300"]
REVAMPED SYSTEM: Rick Simone, executive director of the Federal Hill Commerce Association, said in the past, the association waited for the Providence Board of Licenses to be more proactive in responding to complaints, but it has been much easier to get grievances heard since Mayor Jorge O. Elorza revamped the city’s licensing and permitting system. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
Rick Simone, executive director of the Federal Hill Commerce Association, said merchants on Federal Hill, west of downtown, are happy with the changes, which allow them to avoid repeated visits and long waits at City Hall.
“Everyone I spoke to … thought it was a tremendous improvement,” Simone said.
Simone said even the city’s Board of Licenses – the subject of past scandals and controversies – seems to be more responsive to the concerns of merchants.
In the past, “We were waiting for the board to be more proactive in responding to complaints,” he added. “Now, it’s easier to get your grievances heard.”
Sue Benzuly, president of the Hope Street Merchants Association on the East Side, said her group is thankful for the streamlining of licensing and permitting. But it has had a problem with the city installing parking meters in commercial areas on the East Side, such as Wayland Square and North Main Street, during Elorza’s tenure.
Benzuly said members of her group protested and were able to stop the city from installing parking meters on Hope Street but credits Elorza for generally doing a good job overall.
“I think he’s willing to listen to us,” she added.
Witman said the city should re-examine the way it handles tax-stabilization agreements, which cap property taxes, typically for commercial projects. She suggested Elorza’s administration has relied on the agreements too much – sacrificing tax revenue – and thinks the city should rein in the program.
“It has to be managed in an efficient way. It has to be scrutinized much more than they are doing now,” Witman said.
As far as other initiatives to help small-business owners, Witman said as mayor she would first look at how City Hall is functioning, so it does a better job on basics, such as fixing and improving roads and sidewalks. And that would help create a better environment in which small businesses could thrive.
Witman also said the city should look for new ways to attract businesses.
“Right now, when a company is looking to open in the area, they don’t come to City Hall, they go to the state” for guidance, she added. “We should be incentivizing businesses to come to Providence and each case should be handled differently.”
Lemire said the best thing the city could do for small businesses would be to set aside relatively small city contracts for local companies. He also wants to return some of the larger privatized services, such as trash collection, back to city-provided services, as it should create more jobs for city residents.
“We need to keep people in Providence working,” he added.
Elorza noted that the Providence Business Loan Fund – formerly the Providence Economic Development Partnership and known for management problems – was reformed under his administration. The city program provides loans to small businesses to foster local entrepreneurship.
“We’ve completely cleaned out that system,” the mayor said about revamping the program. “We’ve rebranded it. We’ve repackaged it. And now, you might say, we have this clean bill of sale, so we can put this money out on the street to support our entrepreneurs.”
Elorza also noted his administration’s launch this year of the PVD Self-Employment Program. It targets unemployed and underemployed Providence residents for mentoring and other services to help them start their own businesses.
“We’ve set out a goal to support 100 entrepreneurs. People who have great ideas for business but for one reason or another – usually the difficulty of navigating bureaucratic red tape – they actually never get their business off the ground,” he said.
The city runs both the PVD Self-Employment and the Providence Business Loan Fund with federal Community Development Block Grant money.
According to Elorza, Providence has some of the highest levels of income inequality among cities nationwide, so his administration has focused some economic-development efforts on lessening that gap.
That has ranged from creating new positions at City Hall for small-business assistance to redevelopment plans along the Woonasquatucket River, starting west of downtown into Olneyville then up to North Providence.
“Progress throughout our city has to be felt by everyone,” the mayor explained.
“We’ve done a complete top-to-bottom restructuring and created the Office of Economic Opportunity. We’ve also created a small-business development director. We’ve created a woman- and minority-owned business-development director. And we’ve also created the advanced internship program for kids [ages] 14 to 24,” he said.
“The last piece of this is … how do we bring development to undeveloped neighborhoods and neighborhoods where we see opportunities for growth,” Elorza said of the Woonasquatucket plan. “We have a vision … akin to River Walk in San Antonio. It’s a 20-year, public-private investment project.”
Scott Blake is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Blake@PBN.com.
