Small businesses need support. Can Fort Worth rise to the challenge?

The large red brick building, which sits just off Interstate 35 West and Rosedale Street, should be a center for business and entrepreneurial development in Fort Worth.

There is only one problem. People have not heard about this.

The Business Assistance Center, once the home of the James Ginn School, is designed to be a one-stop shop for small businesses to start or receive assistance—and has been heralded as a national model for business assistance.

The campus is home to 11 organizations with a mission to support small businesses, such as Tech Fort Worth, SCORE, the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce and the Taran Small Business Development Center. The pandemic, declining funding and changes in locations and leadership have left a mark on the center.

But now the city is trying to figure out what the center’s future will look like as the Department of Economic Development eventually moves to the new City Hall at 100 Energy Way, leaving empty offices behind. It comes at a time when the city is trying to boost its employment numbers by increasing the number of corporate relocations, attracting entrepreneurs and supporting local businesses in the city to ensure a healthy economic future.

What’s wrong with the city if it doesn’t build strong support systems? The fear is that small businesses will leave the city if they cannot get the support they need.

Nia Dillon, CEO of startup marketing agency Creative Campaigns, says the people she advises don’t know about the center. She received a grant from the Accelerate Fort Worth Foundation to start her business and rent office space. She said there are no African American business owners at the center.

With some of the minority business owners I’ve served here at the (Business Assistance Center), most of them want to move (to Dallas) because they don’t feel like there’s any help here in Fort Worth. For them, “said Dillon.

Born out of necessity

The Business Assistance Center was once a busy place and was seen as a national model for supporting small businesses.

Business Help Center founder Tony Ford said the center was created by then-Mayor Kay Granger when there was high demand from the community.

At the end of the Cold War, US defense spending was drastically cut, and thousands of people lost their jobs at Carswell Air Force Base due to layoffs at General Dynamics.

Granger began interviewing people in the public sector about how to respond to the economic situation.

“Mayor Granger decided that the best way to stimulate the economy was to put more people to work in small businesses,” Ford said.

Granger decided the best way to do that was to find 13 organizations dedicated to supporting businesses in one location: the Water Garden building in downtown Fort Worth. In the program’s first year, the center served 12,500 people and added 4,000 new jobs, Ford said.

“It was like a train station,” he said. “People were lining up at our door … it was a difference.”

Marketing was by word of mouth. Ford said he spent more time marketing the specific agencies at the center than the center itself, and used the city’s allocated budget to rent the space.

“The tenant organizations are the balloons; the Business Assistance Center itself, we’re the basket,” Ford said.

According to a 1996 Fort Worth Star-Telegram article, the Business Assistance Center’s Small Business Administration chief adviser, Jerry Glover, called it a model that needs to be replicated across the country. Fort Worth Public Library. In the year In 1999, Granger was inducted into the Fort Worth Business Hall of Fame for her contributions to the city’s recovery from recession.

The center was successful for three reasons, Ford said: The center had a champion in Granger, it was born out of necessity and the government did not run it.

“Government is not always effective because it is the trust of the people. And they have to have all these regulations to manage the features, to control the allocation of funds,” said Ford. “I understand why it’s not efficient, but it’s not efficient. And the hope of any business support center type organization is always in a public-private partnership, where the public sector private entity serves its customers. It is when you allow it.

Priorities changed when Kenneth Barr was elected mayor, Ford said. Barr focused on the Fort Worth International Center, which served as a welcome base for visiting businesses and officials from outside the US, and helped foreign businesses establish themselves in Fort Worth. According to a 1997 Star-Telegram article obtained by the Fort Worth Public Library, the bar promises to bring jobs to the area.

The center later moved to the James E. Ginn Entrepreneurial Campus at 600 East Rosedale St., which houses some partner organizations and the Office of Economic Development.

Ford believes that the Center for Business Assistance needs a political champion again.

“There’s no reason why Fort Worth, Texas shouldn’t want to take on the mantle of ‘Entrepreneurship Capital of Texas,'” Ford said. “That was my goal when I took the gig. But to do that, you have to have a political champion,” he said.

“It’s not broken… just ride it.”

As a FUSE Fellow, Kay West is studying how to strengthen small business and entrepreneur support in Fort Worth. In her research, she says people don’t even know the center exists.

“It’s like word of mouth, and some might argue it’s a marketing thing,” West said. But I think it comes back to the programs, the technical support you provide, and that business model.

Some of her advice is rethinking the business model for the Business Help Center and how to fund it. She points to Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, which is based and works with the Office of Economic Development and local research universities.

One funding method could be raising money through tax-increment financing districts to create an economic development fund, or channeling some of the funds from the Chapter 380 tax treaty toward entrepreneurial efforts, she said.

Robert Stearns, director of the city’s Department of Economic Development, said some economic development staff will be at the center when the transition to downtown occurs. The department employs a small business specialist and the city continues to work with the center’s various partner organizations to develop programming.

“It’s not like we’re giving up just because a lot of the workers are going to town hall,” Stearns said.

According to West, staffing will not solve the problem.

“This[business assistant center]doesn’t address the issue of what’s needed in terms of business model and structure,” West said. “And based on my research, I think the community feels that way. I think the community feels that someone is not going to address the issue (centrally).

West is expected to make her final recommendations at the end of Friends later this year.

Jared Sloane, executive director of the Accelerate Fort Worth Foundation on the center’s campus, describes the transition as a turning point.

“If economic development is going to leave, this is really an anchor in this campus,” Sloane said. “And I don’t think we’ve done a very good job individually as far as demonstrating our product and community impact and economic value as campus tenants.”

He said the center was not broken. It’s just a slip.

In the year At the start of the 2020 pandemic, the Fast organization underwent leadership changes. Programming came to a standstill. He said that at the moment when the city is deciding the future of the center, it may be an opportunity to design a strategy to move the center to a better level.

“If we want it to happen, this can really be a hub and hub for entrepreneurship and small business,” Sloane said.

Seth Bodin is a business and economic development reporter for The Fort Worth Report. Contact him at seth.bodine@fortworthreport.org and follow him on Twitter @sbodine120.

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