Building facade concept.
The Bay Area is well known as a mecca of innovation and opportunity. But it’s no secret that as the local economy has flourished in the years since the recession, opportunity — and the prosperity that can result — have not spread evenly.
We need development strategies and policies that empower existing residents and businesses to stay in the places they have long served and call home, such as the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco. The Bayview is home to a close-knit African American community, but became known as a site of toxic dumping, entrenched poverty and crime, and marginalized from the dynamism of other parts of the city.
Businesspeople and property owners in the Bayview knew well what was needed. By listening closely to their ideas, the city of San Francisco, together with our organization, the Local Initiatives Support Corp., sought to revive the neighborhood’s Third Street business corridor. The Local Initiatives program connects entrepreneurs with capital, city services and technical assistance to get nascent enterprises off the ground, strengthen existing ones and recruit new ones to the area.
Without such development strategies, the trends of rising income inequality and poverty will have a lasting effect on the integrity of the whole Bay Area and the well-being and quality of life of residents. Areas with a more even distribution of wealth enjoy long-term economic growth, which, in turn, sparks more investments in education and other programs and services that allow families to climb the economic ladder.
We believe a key is investing in small businesses which, after all, employ nearly 7 million workers in California.
To boost this sector, we need to help budding entrepreneurs access resources available to small businesspeople, and make struggling neighborhoods safer and more appealing to businesses and consumers alike. For example, the Bayview’s Third Street has begun to hum again, because of investments made in small businesses.
In the past year alone, we saw nearly 10 new businesses have opened up along Third Street, creating dozens of jobs and leveraging more than $1.8 million of public/private dollars to tackle blight and safety problems.
The year before, new enterprises on the corridor accounted for a record 135 percent jump in sales tax revenue between 2014 and 2015 — the highest of any retail corridor in the city, according to the San Francisco Controller’s Office of Budget and Analysis.
At the heart of these successes, of course, are the Bayview’s people. They’re harnessing opportunities and building bridges that link their community to the local marketplace.
Take Desmond Bishop, a third-generation Bayview resident and former linebacker with the 49ers, who dreamed of turning a dilapidated building that had long been in his family into a restaurant that would employ local workers and enliven a blighted plaza on Third Street. We’ve helped the Bishop family develop a business plan, collaborate with an architect and access city services — know-how most emerging business people don’t yet have but need to succeed.
When Bishop’s Burgers opens this year, it will generate jobs, and maintain the family’s stake in their home community. It will be one more plank in that bridge spanning the income gap for the Bayview.
We have dozens of prospective Bayviews in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our invitation is to make them happen by forging partnerships among government, philanthropy, the private sector and nonprofits, and by taking our cues from residents and businesses on the ground. That’s how to revive communities for the long haul.
Via: sfchronicle.com
