Chinatown?
From NextCity:
The Broiler is the kind of old-school place that people mention when they talk fondly about “old Seattle” — basic, rough-hewn, unpretentious. It’s also a member of an increasingly endangered species: Businesses that thrived in a pre-tech-boom Seattle are being replaced by sleek doggie-friendly brewpubs and high-end doughnut shops. Old institutions, many of them in low-slung buildings along once-sleepy commercial strips, are disappearing amid new development.
Seattle City Council Member Lisa Herbold wants to make sure businesses like the Broiler — and Husky Deli in West Seattle, Scarecrow Video near the University of Washington and the Ballard Smoke Shop dive bar in northwest Seattle — don’t go the way of the Sunset Bowl, Piecora’s Pizza and other beloved local institutions that have closed in the last decade. To that end, she’s proposed a “legacy business” program that would identify such neighborhood institutions and provide them with financial or regulatory support to help them survive as Seattle continues to boom. …
Seattle City Council Member Lisa Herbold wants to make sure businesses like the Broiler — and Husky Deli in West Seattle, Scarecrow Video near the University of Washington and the Ballard Smoke Shop dive bar in northwest Seattle — don’t go the way of the Sunset Bowl, Piecora’s Pizza and other beloved local institutions that have closed in the last decade. To that end, she’s proposed a “legacy business” program that would identify such neighborhood institutions and provide them with financial or regulatory support to help them survive as Seattle continues to boom. …
Her idea, which is still in its infancy — the city council just allocated $100,000 to study what a legacy business program might look like — is loosely based on a similar program in San Francisco, which has also lost older businesses to new development. Voters passed a proposition for it by a margin of 57 to 43 percent in 2015. Businesses that are 30 years or older, “have contributed to their neighborhood’s history,” and agree to maintain their identity can apply for placement on the city’s Legacy Business Registry.
Once the mayor or a member of the Board of Supervisors nominates a business, and the Small Business Commission approves the nomination, the business becomes eligible for grants of up to $50,000 to help with rent, renovations or other costs. (Building owners could also get grants to help subsidize below-market rents.) So far, about 300 businesses have qualified, and the program — which got off to a slow start, apparently in part because the initial legislation didn’t fund a staffer to administer the grants — is on track to fund grants of about $3 million a year.
Full story here.
Once the mayor or a member of the Board of Supervisors nominates a business, and the Small Business Commission approves the nomination, the business becomes eligible for grants of up to $50,000 to help with rent, renovations or other costs. (Building owners could also get grants to help subsidize below-market rents.) So far, about 300 businesses have qualified, and the program — which got off to a slow start, apparently in part because the initial legislation didn’t fund a staffer to administer the grants — is on track to fund grants of about $3 million a year.
Full story here.
(or main street, strathcona, false creek flats, mount pleasant, etc…)
Basically, some of the same sort of tenure rights for business as renters have. For essentially the same reasons.
When San Francisco tried this, it ended with taxi businesses being marked as “legacy”: http://www.sfexaminer.com/luxor-cabs-receive-legacy-business-status/
I’m not exactly confident that Vancouver will be any better at picking and choosing legacy businesses for favoritism.
Hey, the B.C. gov’t is on it: investing millions to protect legacy taxi industry. Good luck.
I welcome it, the sterile commercial spaces in new development tend to be affordable to the same boring chain businesses (Subway, anyone?)
Silliness. Subsidizing businesses just because they’re old? Oh, sorry, because they “so significantly engender the city’s historic character and working class urban fabric”. Perhaps the people of Seattle are right in assuming there is absolutely nothing more worthwhile to spend several million dollars of their own money on. I know there sure isn’t here. Where do we sign?!
Why only east side neighbourhoods? What about the Naam, as just one example? But really, how can this proposal be at all sustainable?
There is accepted logic that residential space have rate-of-change legislation to some degree … it is not altogether different to consider that commercial/retail have also. If it is sustainable for one, why not also the other?