The Longmont Downtown Development Authority is kicking off the holiday season Friday with a weekend dedicated to small businesses.
The city’s first-ever Small Business Weekend, an offshoot of the nationwide American Express Small Business Saturday initiative held the Saturday after Thanksgiving, will run through Sunday.
Small Business Weekend will entail three days of things to do downtown, according to the LDDA website. Activities will include the holiday tree lighting, ice carving demonstrations, seasonal decorations, music, roaming holiday characters, giveaways and complimentary ornaments, as well as artist pop-ups.
The coronavirus pandemic has put unprecedented strain on small businesses across the country, making millions of jobs vulnerable and leading some to closure. As temperatures drop and COVID-19 cases rise, local business owners worry about what this winter might mean for them.
From the CARES Act at the federal level to two rounds of emergency funding through the local Strongmont campaign, various solutions have been proposed to bring relief to struggling small businesses.
The upcoming holiday season brings an opportunity for the Longmont community to support small businesses, Colin Argys, LDDA marketing specialist and event coordinator, stated in a news release outlining the plan for promoting Downtown Longmont through the holidays.
“After an extremely challenging year, this holiday season is one of the most critical in history for local small businesses, he stated. “This winter will be make-or-break for many local businesses.”
Josie Saenz, owner of Benny’s Tacos, has experienced first-hand the impact of the pandemic.
“Four years ago, we started as a small family business and thank God things had been going well before all this started and this huge burden fell on our laps,” she said. “The pandemic has affected us.”
This restaurant bringing customers the flavors of Northern Mexico has enjoyed the benefits of being centrally located on Main Street, according to Saenz. But it is lacking the necessary infrastructure to continue serving the public during COVID-19.
“We are trying to keep going forward, to not let it fall apart,” she said. “I’m thinking about doing delivery, which we don’t yet have, to promote ourselves. The good thing is that we have a lot of support from the city.”
The impact of the pandemic often is exacerbated for Latino and minority-owned businesses, because they lack an online presence and don’t have access to capital,” said Berenice Garcia-Tellez, economic sustainability specialist at the city of Longmont and secretary for the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Boulder County board of directors.
“It’s important that we support all business, but have a special consideration for minority-owned business,” she said.
One suggestion the Latino Chamber has put forward is asking community members to shop locally least once a week through the winter, Garcia-Tellez said.
“If we can commit to buy local once per week, it would make a huge difference in supporting our businesses and making sure the money stays in the local community,” she said.
Kimberlee McKee, LDDA executive director, reminded people that while the county’s red status on the state’s COVID dial dashboard limits restaurants to 25% or less of capacity, retail businesses remain at 50%, which will provide more flexibility for shopping this weekend.
“If a business is at capacity, we hope folks have the patience to visit other businesses and come back and patronize a business that may have reached it’s capacity at the moment,” she said.
“We’re having some artists do murals on some storefronts and we will have a quintet of the symphony play in an alleyway,” she said. “We are trying to make sure people have things that still embrace the holidays but can be done outdoors and can be done safely.”
The Small Business Weekend event has been designed to spread people throughout the three days so everyone has enough time and feels safe to shop, she said.
“We hope that our community can send a message to our local retailers and businesses that they are important and that the community will weather any storm with them,” she said.
Throughout the holiday season, LDDA in conjunction with the city and the Longmont Area Chamber of Commerce will promote opportunities encouraging community members to shop local, including the Winter Passport, the VIP Shopper program and a lighting display contest, according to the LDDA news release. It also has created a Shop Local page on its website.
For Saenz, the multiple supports and programs that have been launched across the city are helpful and signal a symbol of hope for the uncertain months ahead.
“All of these (programs) helps us a lot so we don’t get discouraged, to not give up and say it will not work out,” she said “We have to keep selling because there is still a long way to go."
