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The Lakeland Chamber of Commerce is hoping to help minority and other start-up companies set up shop in the city and is asking city commissioners to approve up to $800,000 in federal American Recovery Act funding to attract already established minority businesses to the city.
However, the council may be competing for funding with another city favorite: the Mayor’s Council on the Arts.
“The reason we’re here today is to talk about how the council and the chamber foundation think about putting Lakeland in a stronger business ecosystem so our businesses can access the same services and resources that our competitors and Tampa and Orlando can,” Amy Wiggins, the chamber’s executive director, told city commissioners at their Monday morning meeting. .
Wiggins was bringing with him James Randolph and Albert Lynn of Tampa Bay Black Business Investment Corporation, founded 35 years ago, along with Prospera USA Vice President Fabian Yepez. and helps Hispanic business owners in Central Florida.
Some of the services offered by both groups include seminars on starting and maintaining a business, connecting funding sources and even grants.
Former Lakeland Mayor Gow Fields is helping to lead the formal inquiry and recalls a time when neither the Chamber of Commerce nor the City Commission seemed like it now.
“My first time on the Chamber Board was in the late 80’s early 90’s. It’s a different chamber of commerce in that it’s inviting and inclusive,” Fields said. “When I first served on the Chamber Board, it was still the North Lakeland Chamber of Commerce. It had nothing to do with color. They didn’t believe the unit cared about anyone north of I-4. And so he had to go a long way to make further changes to the Council.
Fields said the chamber’s foundation board wants to use the money and any funding from the city or county the way Publix supermarket founder George Jenkins would have liked. In the year In 1973, Jenkins contributed $500,000 to create the Lakeland Chamber Foundation, a non-profit entity separate from the Lakeland Chamber of Commerce. It is currently transitioning from a private foundation to a public one.
“All the things we learned then, we have an opportunity today to breathe into a new level of life where he is,” Fields said.
Fields In 1989, he was chairman of the Minority Business Development Division of the Central Florida Development Council, he said. Then he tried partnering with Tampa’s BBC.
“They were kind enough to respond, but they told us that I-4 goes in both directions and we could go on the road to get to them,” Fields said. “This is really our first opportunity to have them here. We’re in a different place than we were in the late ’80s. If we can bring our people here and let them use the knowledge and resources they have in this community to benefit our people, we can do a great job.”
Lee, the president and CEO of the BBC, said that the BBC was very interested in opening an office in Lakeland because its main responsibility was to provide support and services to small business owners, many of whom were disadvantaged and lacked capital resources. And they didn’t have strong technical support in their community.
“That’s what the Tampa Bay BBC has done for 35 years, bringing those services to communities, and I think we’ve done it very well. We’ve lent over $20 million over the years we’ve been around,” Lee said. “In the last year, a year and a half, through our collaboration with some of our banking partners, we’ve been able to move the needle even further by providing approximately $3.5 million in approved loans to small businesses.
Although the BBC is primarily a technical support provider, they also have the ability to provide financial capital from their own funds and introduce customers to bank partners.
“One of the things we’ve found is that those individuals need to understand why they need capital and how to apply and use that capital,” Lee said. “I was a banker for 25 to 30 years and mostly on the business side. So I understand that side very well. I was also an entrepreneur. I also owned a dry cleaning chain in Tampa. One of the things I’ve learned over the last 10 years with the BBC is that a lot of people want to be business owners; They don’t have that technical support together. And in our communities, people like to work with people from their local area because they feel like they understand your situation and you can speak that language, and I think that’s what BBIC brings.
Randolph, a BBC vice chairman, has owned Carolina Consulting Solutions, a small business in Brandon for 27 years, so he knows the rigors of starting and maintaining a business. If given the funding, it will serve as a BBC liaison in Lakeland.
“I was going 75 miles an hour on Interstate 4 into Lakeland and saw the signs that said Lakeland. When I came back I saw the same signs,” Randolph said. “I finally got off the street about two and a half years ago and started seeing what she was doing in the city and I was really impressed.
Prospera Florida Yepes reports that Lakeland’s Hispanic population has grown more than 34 percent and Polk County’s has grown 82 percent over the past 10 years.
“Looking at the changes in this area, you can see that there is a huge demand for our services,” Yepes said. “We offer one-on-one consultations for business seminars. We help with business grants – not money, but in services. Although we don’t give money directly, we help with access to capital.”
Two years ago, at the start of the Covid economy, Prospero gave a loan to a Lakeland nursery business.
“They were hurt and not only closed three locations, but they were able to fix and rebuild a fourth,” Yepes said, “Hispanics also like to work in the same group. There’s more confidence and added difficulty in how to open a business and do business. We see that there’s a language barrier. That’s always very It’s important and it’s the way business is done in the United States and possibly with the countries they come from.
Fields added that the owner of the business, a daycare center, named the company after his young son — common in Latin America. A bank cannot lend money to a minor, so it cannot lend money to the company. Yepes helped settle the ownership issue.
He also said they work with entities like Cataput and Well, which are business incubators.
Commissioners had financial questions for Field and his officials.
Commissioner Bill “Tiger” Read wanted to know whether the money being given to the companies was a grant or a loan. He said that the fields will be loans that need to be returned.
“A common phrase we use in America is that people have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” Fields says. “Well, if their shoe is broken, someone has to come in and show them how to fix the shoe, including the bootstrap, and then we can work on traction. If they don’t have a pair of boots with bootstraps, we can help them figure out how to go about doing that. So they can help pull themselves together with those same bootstraps and therefore it’s a little deeper than the usual banking relationship, but there are no subsidies.
Read on then wanted to know who would be eligible for funding.
“I’m usually a ‘no’ person – I mean everyone knows I’m the hardest person to get money from. “I want it to reach all our citizens. I don’t want it to go to one tribe or group. And so I need some assurance that it will go there. Everyone needs money compared to Hispanics or women or the like. Is that something in the protocol or does your funding need to go to these different groups?
Fields assured him that everyone was welcome to use the BBC and Prospera.
“Our approach is open to all. It’s not limited by race, membership in any way, shape or form,” Fields said. “That’s what we’ve shared with them. They attract people who look like them and help them more, but they don’t close the door to anyone.”
Commissioner Stephanie Madden went on to ask if the proposed program is a way to help make up for past systemic racial injustices in Lakeland, including by taking eminent domain and demolishing the historic Moorhead Black neighborhood to build what is now known as the RP Financial Aid Center. and erecting a Confederate monument in the town square. She asked if the Chamber of Commerce and the business community could become more diverse as a result of the program.
“I think the whole country has had some soul-searching in the last six years. It’s been part of our conversation for decades,” Madden said. “So I want to hear a little bit more about how you feel, and not just people who are at risk or left out, but how this integrates those people into the council, into city government, and into our downtown square, and business in general. Looking back on this ten years ago, this has changed in our community. Let’s say there was one more thing we did at a critical time in history to embrace diversity and put our money where our mouth is. We’ve invested. And that’s what I’m trying to measure, if this is going to have that kind of effect, or if this other organization is asking for money today, if many others are affected by the time of COVID. Is it competing with organizations?”
As Fields considers moving his Confederate monument to Veterans Park in 2019, he expressed his feelings as he listened to Madden talk about segregated swimming pools during his lifetime with people who shared their stories of segregation.
“If we’re going to build a house where everyone can come and have the resources they need, we have to lay the foundation first,” Fields said. We don’t have the house if you want. Because we have no foundation to stand on. Living here at the BBC and Prospera with Chamber Foundation staff…and the ability to bring other personal gifts to the table. We cannot build the house you describe without a foundation. By laying the foundation, we will make you laugh. We are asking you to help us lay the foundation.
City Manager Shawn Sherruz reminded the commissioners that there was another request from the Mayor’s Arts Council for ARPA funding.
Mayor Bill Mutz said the council is citywide and has $275,000 in the city budget on the line, the same amount it received last year and about $25,000 more than in previous years. But House Speaker Kerry Falwell plans to formally request a third of ARPA’s funding. She is scheduled to address commissioners at their next meeting, scheduled for Sept. 6.
“Last year’s Arts Council members will be for all the smaller arts organizations that have lost disproportionate funding during the Covid-19 pandemic,” Mutz said.
Sherows advises that staff has been considering requests and that there are options that could be presented and possibly reduce or reduce some of the ancillary costs that come with certain funding sources.
“So we’re ready to have that conversation,” Sherruth said. “The idea is that maybe we have two presentations and we will have a discussion about the sources of funds and the level, if any commissioner wants to be appointed, maybe then in two hearings in September at the first public budget hearing. If this is the pleasure of the commission.
As the commissioners looked around, Mutz all seemed to publicly support keeping staff recommendations.
“I think we’re all going to be thumbs,” Mutz said.
The next City Commission meeting is September 6th and budget hearings are scheduled for September 8th and September 22nd.
Kimberly C. Moore is an award-winning reporter and native of Lakeland. It can be found on her [email protected] or 863-272-9250.
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