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New Grants Will Provide Resources to Local Businesses in Lynn

The City of Lynn, in partnership with Lynn Main Streets (LMS), has been awarded $81,132 through the Massachusetts Department of Transportation Shared Streets and Spaces Grant Program. This grant will provide resources and support to restaurants and retail businesses in Lynn, with a focus on the downtown, through ‘creative reopening’ solutions that allow for safe and profitable outdoor vending.

With these funds, up to ten locations will receive outdoor dining/vending capabilities to expand on their services to-date. Businesses were paired with a local artist, youth group and/or member of our local creative community to assist in beautifying their space and celebrating its uniqueness, making it identifiable as a true local asset that the community can rally around.

 ‘Creative Reopenings’ is the innovative and artistic nature of adding creative community place keeping elements to compliant outdoor infrastructure. As with every endeavor introduced by LMS, community engagement plays a key role in understanding the biggest needs and concerns in order to best utilize the assistance provided. Main Streets released two surveys, both to business owners and consumers in multiple languages, to gauge and assess factors such as comfortability levels, preferred methods, and operational capabilities.

“COVID-19 has presented a number of obstacles for our City and particularly the small business community in Lynn,” said Mayor Thomas M. McGee. “I am proud of this collaborative effort by City officials and Lynn Main Streets to take advantage of this MassDOT grant to assist local businesses struggling during these unprecedented times. We will continue to work together with members of our community to find innovative ways to offer enjoyable outdoor dining experiences that make customers feel safe and comfortable at the same time.”

Supporting the small business community has always been an essential part of creating an inclusive and sustainable downtown. This has become even more evident with the current public health crisis that continues to dramatically impact our community at large, especially our Lynn owned businesses. Some of the hardest hit members of our community have been our small and minority owned businesses. A recent MassInc poll reported that the smallest businesses face the steepest road to recovery with a majority of them seeing declines greater than 50% for the first part of the year, compared to 35% of larger businesses. This dynamic has the potential to exacerbate inequities, as smaller businesses are more likely to be founded or owned by women and people of color.

“We are thinking forward, for the few warm days we have left and for next year to make Lynn look a great place to sit outside and enjoy food in a safe environment,” said Freddy Cuevas, CFO & Owner of Los Chamos Cuisine. “We have a few plans for next year and I believe with the help of the city providing permits on a fast pace, and also Lynn Main Streets helping with all the logistics and putting together this project, it gives hope to all small and minority businesses to keep working hard to get through this pandemic. We have had to make difficult sacrifices, but we are still here and we believe any type of help at this moment is very important.”

This Shared Streets grant will complement the ongoing work being conducted by Lynn Main Streets through the MassDevelopment Commonwealth Places COVID-19 Response Round: Resurgent Places Grant. The grant award included $10,000 to expand Lynn Main Streets’ ability to assist businesses to continue to offer outdoor dining as the colder months approach. LMS will be launching a crowdsourcing campaign in the coming weeks in order to raise additional funding and support for this community-response initiative.

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