Category: black owned business

COLUMBIA, S.C. — One group of local business owners couldn’t wait until Juneteenth to celebrate the history of Black-owned businesses in Columbia.

Dozens of local entrepreneurs gathered together Tuesday at 1208 Washington, the historic venue in downtown Columbia, for Juneteenth Extravaganza, a two-day summit where those in attendance were hoping to learn more about how to promote and supercharge their businesses.

The event was also a tie-in to Wednesday’s premiere of a new documentary on what’s known as “Columbia’s Black Wall Street,” a region in downtown Columbia that operated decades ago during segregation and provided business opportunities to Black business owners.

Tuesday’s summit featured successful speakers from the worlds of business, film, television, even health and beauty products, who sought to inspire other business owners to take chances and to not fear failure.

Ayesha Driggers is the Director of Columbia’s Office of Business Opportunities. She said events like these are essential for the community.

“It’s important to the city because as we move forward, we want to make sure that we honor those legacy businesses that are coming forward, but also to make sure that we encourage our creatives, so those that are in the film industry, those artists, those, television actors, we want to make sure they know they also have a place in the history of our city.”

The event also included plenty of networking opportunities, panel interviews and various workshops focused on the essentials of starting and running a business. Topics included business law, the importance of accounting, and how to best incorporate ethics and integrity into a business.

Driggers said her office is available year-round to support Columbia-based businesses, even if they’re just getting started.

“We can help with the planning phase on how to get started on their business. How to create a business plan, and just having that discussion on what free resources are available,” she said.

The Juneteenth Extravaganza summit wraps up Wednesday evening with a red-carpet premiere of ‘Columbia’s Black Wall Street’ at the Nickelodeon theater, followed by a party at the Columbia Museum of Art, featuring a concert by Kenny Lattimore and Susan Carol, among others. The premiere starts at 5:00 p.m.

WASHINGTON — Three D.C. natives recently launched their own tequila brand. The name Vascano represents the bond between its three co-founders and lifelong friends, Adanna Mbanugo, Samantha Johnson and Vernon Leftwich. 

“Vascano stands for Vernon, Adanna, Samantha and ‘C’ is for community. Ano means four in Ebo, a dialect in South Central Africa,” said Mbanugo the Content & Events Manager for Vascano Tequila.

The brand’s logo is inspired by a West African adinkra symbol Akoma Ntoso, which means ‘linked hearts.’ 

The new spirit brand is an idea the best friends dreamed up during the pandemic after they moved in together. Four years later, Vascano joins the small, but growing list of minority owned spirit brands in the U.S. They hope to bring diversity to the drinks industry, representing black, women and LGBTQ+ business owners. 

Although the friends may not always agree on everything, they say tequila has always brought them together. 

“Tequila is always a guaranteed yes!,” said Johnson, who is the Marketing & Creative for Vascano Tequila.

The co-founders say their goal is to create community while also opening doors for other minority owned businesses. They hope being transparent about their own business journey will bring awareness to the lack of funding opportunities for people of color. 

Vascano Tequila was accepted into Distill Ventures pre-accelerator program which helped them produce their first batch of inventory. Distill Ventures offers funding and mentorship to increase diverse representations in the drinks industry. 

The co-founders previously ran a popular cultural bar crawl business that came to a standstill during the pandemic, but wanted to find a way to bring people together again. 

“It was a really special initiative to bring people of color anyone into the community to experience small businesses, black owned businesses also street art,” said Johnson. 

The friends and business owners say they are intentional about every aspect of their tequila. From making sure the bottles are sustainable and made from recycled glass, to using a distillery in Mexico where the majority of staff are women. 

“We just really want to get into that mode to just giving back to businesses that are a lot of times looked over in this space,” said Mbanugo. 

Vascano is working with a local, woman owned distributor Harbor Wines.  Their tequila is currently available for purchase on their website.

According to most polls, former President Donald Trump is leading President Joe Biden in the 2024 election. And yet, in the midst of all of the chaos surrounding yet another historic presidential election cycle, the one thing that isn’t being talked about enough is actual policy; Trump has spent much of the campaign dwelling on the very basket the Democrats seem to have put all their eggs in—his manifold criminal trials.

It’s fair for Trump to talk about the veracity of the legal issues surrounding him, but he is mistaken if he thinks that he can coast to re-election on his own grievances. People are hurting, and if he wants to win, Trump needs to clearly articulate what he will do to improve the lives of the average American.

To that end, the Trump campaign should pursue a bold economic vision, one that could transform the country for years to come. He should plot out an aggressive economic plan targeting communities in the highest need and combine them into his version of FDR’s “New Deal” to usher in a badly needed era of prosperity. The good news is, Trump doesn’t have to look very far for the plan: His campaign introduced three in 2020 which would make an excellent foundation for a Trump New Deal. In 2020, they were called Revitalizing Rural America, the American Dream Plan, and the Platinum Plan.

The Platinum Plan called for increasing access to capital in Black communities, to the tune of $500 billion, as well as benefits for local hires, and increasing the number of Black owned contracting businesses and private equity investment funds with $40 billion in government funding and traditional private investment. The plan also called for connecting HBCU’s with government research and development, potentially opening up billions to those institutions. It also called for allowing Black churches to compete for federal dollars for community and social programs, “examining alternative ways to build credit, including rent, utilities and phone bills” and other licensing reforms.

The Platinum Plan is a great place for Trump to start. Black businesses hire more Black people than non-Black owned businesses, and a recent Brookings Institution report pointed out that the underrepresentation of Black businesses is costing the American economy billions of dollars. The Platinum Plan’s call for $500 Billion in capital to Black businesses alone would’ve been transformative for the community and the nation.

The American Dream plan was just as aggressive. That plan called for adding 500,000 Hispanic owned businesses to the economy, increasing access to capital and federal contracting opportunities, and creating 2 million new jobs in the Hispanic American community. It even called for making the Minority Business Development Agency permanent, a near-radical suggestion considering the number of so called conservatives attempting to tear down minority business incentives.

Similar to the Platinum Plan, the American Dream plan also called for giving Hispanic churches “the ability to compete for federal resources for their communities,” opening up new resources to those institutions.

The Revitalizing Rural America plan, which was part of the Trump White House’s 2021 budget proposal introduced in 2020, would have invested billions into that part of the country. The proposal included a $1.5 billion loan level for rural business, $8.9 billion in farm loans, and $25 billion for a new ‘Revitalizing Rural America’ grant program “to help areas with broadband, transportation, water and road and bridge projects.”

The plan also included $614 million in funding for water and wastewater grants and loans, $5.5 billion in rural electric loans, $690 million in loans to finance broadband infrastructure, among other things.

The Trump campaign would be wise to pursue all of these proposals again. Not only would they change the country for the better, but they are smart politically. Combining the three into one overall New Deal type plan is also a way to unify people in order to get it done.

The three proposals would impact a large swath of the country, as Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and rural Americans, who are overwhelmingly white, would all be well positioned to be full participants in a rebuilt American economy.

It makes sense to specifically target these groups for revitalization, as that is where the greatest need and growth potential is. America cannot continue to grow economically without ensuring that all of its citizens receive access to opportunity.

If they really want to set the country on the right path and ensure that Trump’s high-for-a-Republican poll numbers among minorities aren’t a mirage, they need to breathe new life into their previous plans, remove the saboteurs on their own side who are trying to destroy initiatives like this, and move forward.

Darvio Morrow is CEO of the FCB Radio Network and co-host of The Outlaws Radio Show.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

Entrepreneurs Worry Broken Leases Will Leave Them with Insurmountable Debt

OKLAHOMA CITY — The EastPoint Project, located at 1720 NE 23^rd Street, was heralded in its development phase as haven for Black entrepreneurs who wanted to grow their businesses in Northeast Oklahoma City’s historically Black community.  But today, several of the Black owned businesses that opened in the development have closed, evicted for failure to pay rent. 

“Businesses that are truly Black owned” are closing, said Brittani Hunter, who’s coffee shop, Spiked: A Coffee Concept, closed its doors a few weeks ago. 

However, the founders of Pivot Project, the development team that brought the EastPoint Project to life while attempting to “reframe the conversation with white developers going into Black communities,” remain hopeful the project will ultimately succeed. 

Some of the former tenants are now taking a second look at the leases they signed — for which they were required to provide a personal guarantee putting their personal assets at risk if they didn’t stay current with rent payments for the entire 10-year lease period — as they face pending legal action.  Only now are some understanding that the 15% equity ownership stake in the EastPoint Project they received upon signing their lease becomes forfeit if they default on the lease before they’ve paid rent for 10 years — leaving them without the ownership interest in the property thought they were investing in when they chose to open their businesses at EastPoint.

Former banker Jonathan Dodson and partners Ben Sellers and David Wanzer founded Pivot Project in 2014 and quickly established a strong reputation for creative redevelopment, successfully revitalizing long-dormant structures and neglected areas around Oklahoma City. The Alliance for Economic Development of Oklahoma City reached out to Pivot when a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district, allowing tax dollars to be reallocated toward private development for areas in need of additional investment, was created for the NE 23^rd Street corridor.  The Alliance asked Pivot about using TIF funds to redevelop the EastPoint site, which then was nearly vacant and partially under the Urban Renewal Authority’s ownership.

“Pivot agreed to take a look, but wanted to have the plan defined by locals rather than by outsiders,” according to a profile written about the project by the Urban Land Institute. 

“We first wanted to reframe the conversation with white developers going into black communities,” Dodson told writer Martita Mestey for an article that appeared in Authority Magazine in 2021.  “Those values we prize the most — community, joy and perseverance — exist in abundance on the east side of town.  Therefore, we were and are happy to prostitute our access to wealth and power so that we could enter into the community.”

Dodson told Authority Magazine he had experienced a turning point moment in his life some years ago when, attending a community reconciliation event held after a racially-charged incident, “an African American pastor stood up and said, ‘If you want to know what it is like to walk in my shoes, when was the last time you had someone like me over for dinner?’ That struck a personal chord in me as at that time I was not in any kind of relationship with the black community.  Over the next two years, that moment created a sense of intentionality and purpose.”

When the time came to develop the EastPoint property, “Dodson’s first call was to Sandino Thompson, a community development leader he knew who lived nearby,” reads the ULI profile.  “Thompson agreed to help with project strategy in return for an equity stake and fee income.” 

Dodson also reached out to Jabee Williams, whom Dodson described as a “rapper” and “friend” in the Authority Magazine article.  “His reputation and care for the community has been instrumental in bring[ing] tenants to the development,” Dodson said of Williams.

The article states that when EastPoint was in its initial phases, Dodson said Williams took him to barbershop within walking distance of EastPoint to meet someone named “Mailman.”

“After giving Jabee a hug he started firing off questions related to the project,” said Dodson, as quoted in the Authority Magazine article.  “At the end, he said we were good and he was excited about it.  As Jabee and I walked out, I asked him, totally confused, ‘what was that about?’ He said something like, ‘Mailman is an OG and he needed to bless the project.’  After a quick tutorial on what I [sic] meant to be an OG, Made, and other things, I was shocked.  My friend had just risked his reputation to allow our project to be protected.  This only happened because he knew I loved him and he was not just some ‘black face’ for the project.”

But the project did need a Black face, according to Erica Emery and Monique Short, sisters and owners of Monarch Property Group, which has its office in the EastPoint Project, as they were quoted in a 2020 interview with Elizabeth Macbride, writing for New Builders Dispatch.  After years of failed ventures, East Side neighbors were downright hostile to outsiders, the article states. 

“If developers show up in all their whiteness, there would be riots,” said Emery, as quoted in the New Builders Dispatch story.

“Once or twice a month, I get a call from a someone working on a project. They want a black face involved,” said Short, as quoted in the story.

According to the ULI article, TIF funds provided about 27% of the $8.7 million project budget, with the $1.3 million TIF allocation for the first phase split between a $600,000 “soft loan,” gradually forgiven over time, and a $700,000 predevelopment grant.  Use of the TIF funds meant that the developers were unable to sell the newly renovated property for a period of ten years.  The TIF allocation included a “clawback” provision, requiring the developers to pay back the TIF money if they sold the development to a new owner within 10 years.  That provision helped shape how the tenants’ leases were structured, also locking them into a 10-year agreement but providing tenants with equity which “included a share of the project’s cash flow over the city’s 10-year lockup period.”

Dodson told ULI that Pivot invested in the tenants, coaching them through paperwork and filing for permits, and that several spaces had to be re-leased multiple times as various ideas fell through.  

“We have to purposely reinvest in those communities, not because it makes economic sense but because it is morally imperative,” Dodson told Authority Magazine.  “What I do hope is that the white community as a whole starts to realize the beauty, wonder and culture in the Black and African American community.  It is not about appropriating or paternalism, but rather about entering into a world that can teach us so many things, including joy. This includes all at-risk communities.  So much joy is not being accessed because our comfort had deluded us.”

Noting that the African American community’s ability to attract investment to the historically Black area of town has been negatively impacted by white flight, redlining, eminent domain and other issues, Dodson said Pivot provided tenants with additional buildout assistance, reduced rent, and set aside an equity stake in the real estate.  The moment the tenants signed a lease, they became a 15% pro-rata owner in the project, Dodson said.

“I couldn’t imagine developing this, and not having tenants share in the upside,” Dodson told ULI.  Providing tenants with 15% ownership means “’we’re giving up the majority of the value, but that was created by the people who took the risk’ of opening businesses and creating the site’s value,” Dodson said. “The offer of an equity stake did attract some businesses, who might have found cheaper options elsewhere,” reads the article. 

The offer of an equity stake was a powerful attraction for Emmanuel Sosanya, owner of Intentional Fitness, Sosanya said.  Sosanya was required to provide a 10-year personal guarantee when he signed his lease, putting his personal assets on the line if his business became unable to pay the rent over the next decade. 

According to U.S. Census statistics, roughly a third of new small businesses close within their first two years, and half shut down within their first five years.

“In so many words, I got screwed,” Sosanya told The Black Chronicle.  Intentional Fitness — which opened just two months before COVID 19 struck in 2020 — found creative ways to stay in business despite the pandemic lockdown on gyms and the challenges of opening the area’s first ever private fitness center.  But as the business continued to face mounting financial challenges, Sosanya shut down the gym for good and obtained a temporary, one-year sublease tenant for the space to keep him from going into default on the lease.  When the yearlong sublease is up, Sosanya is hoping he can renegotiate the lease agreement or find some other way to stay current with rent and avoid losing his 15% stake in the development.

“You are treated as a 15% owner from day one; the only way you lose that ownership is if you default on your rent,” Dodson told The Black Chronicle.  “Some chose not to sublease the space and just close the doors, so in those scenarios they lose their ownership.”

What happens to the equity lost by those tenants who defaulted on their lease will be decided by the other tenants who are still current with their lease agreements. 

“We’re going to defer to what the tenants want to do that have stayed in business,” Dodson said.  They might choose to redistribute the ownership percentages, or present some offer to the new tenants coming in, or find some other novel solution.  “We’ll honor their request, however that winds up looking.  We’re not going to make that decision as a developer,” Dodson said.

Pivot made every effort to help the Black owned businesses formerly housed at EastPoint before getting to the point of eviction, Dodson said.  Pivot offered to terminate leases early to prevent debt from accruing and allowed tenants to sublet.  

“We’ve had a lot of tenants who fell behind on rent and we worked with them,” Dodson said.  “It’s really come down to what point, at some point, we have to figure it out if people aren’t paying rent. It’s not fair to the people who are paying rent.” 

Restaurant owners all over the city have experienced a difficult financial cycle, and an unprecedented number of metro area restaurants have closed over the last year, but Scrambl’d owner Cordell Love and Eastside Pizza owner Williams are still in business at EastPoint. 

“They’ve been able to continue to pull people to their concepts and they’ve been able to pay rent,” Dodson said.  “What Cordell has done is pretty amazing, what Jabee has done has been pretty amazing, but it’s been hard.”

Kindred Spirits, the nightspot that had been co-founded by Thompson and Chaya Pennington-Fletcher, was doing well before there was a shooting at the establishment last September, leading to its closing.  The business may soon reopen with new management.

Thompson’s involvement with the EastPoint Project was cited in an April 18 press release issued by investment firm Echo, announcing Thompson was tapped to manage $1.5 million to support minority owned businesses in Oklahoma City.  The investment, which is projected to grow to $15 million, is provided through investment firm Echo, founded by Christian Kanady, a businessman who oversees more than $1.5 billion in assets under management across the country. 

“[This fund is] focused on building businesses in Oklahoma,” Thompson said in the release.  “It will be focused on minority, Black and brown, women-owned businesses and industry.”

Two Black women business owners who were some of the first tenants at EastPoint just shut down their businesses after falling behind on rent. 

Courtney Strickland opened Belle Books Boutique and More in Sept. 2020 on her own dime, creating a brick-and-mortar storefront for her book publishing business and turning it into a retail boutique, filled with books and locally created merchandise.  The store also served as a community center, providing story time events for children and a host of charitable events.

“To say I was crazy for opening during a pandemic is an understatement and it hasn’t been easy,” Strickland wrote when starting a GoFundMe a few months ago.  “I’ve poured everything I have into this business, financially and mentally.  But I do not believe it was in vain.  Partnering with Youth First we’ve given away close to 600 books.  November of 2020 in collaboration with family we fed 75 families for Thanksgiving and I want more than anything to continue to be more than a business owner in this community.  My desire to serve outweighs the monetary gain but trying to do it alone is no longer an option.”  

Strickland weathered the pandemic and the economy for nearly three years before finally falling behind on the rent last summer, she said.  Belle Books opened before many of the other businesses in the EastPoint development, and she claimed not every tenant was treated the same. 

“We had to get a sign approved and put up before we could open our doors,” Strickland said, a $2,000 expenditure, “but that wasn’t required for anyone else, if you’re friends with the group.”  Other tenants were already open and operating without signage when the development obtained funding to provide signage for them, she said.  While some of the other businesses did bring in more foot traffic to the development, Strickland said, often their patrons would take up the parking in front of her boutique. 

Clearing out her former business in early May, Strickland said the experience was “bittersweet,” but she remains faithful and hopeful as she determines her future plans — after taking a break to enjoy time with her new grandchild. 

“I’m ready to release all of this,” Strickland said. 

In the final hours before she was required to turn over the keys to her former space, Hunter allowed members of the community to carry off whatever fixtures and furniture they wanted.  The notice to vacate directed her to leave the space in the condition in which was when she took possession, she said to a former patron carrying away bar stools in late April.

“Clearly, they are not aware of what condition this space was in when I took possession,” said Hunter, claiming that she paid for installation of the electrical system, heating and air, as well as painting and installing the decorative bar, in a space she described as an “empty box” when she took possession.

Hunter said Pivot had been supportive in the beginning, when the project was under consideration for a ULI award and her story was highlighted as Black woman business owner who is a direct descendant of a successful entrepreneur in Tulsa’s historic Greenwood District.  In early May, Hunter said prospective tenants had already been coming by to look over the space, even as she worked to take down her decorations and disassemble her dream.

“We still very much care for the tenants who have left, but we’ve handed all these issues over to our attorneys,” Dodson said.  

In the end, a judge may decide how much the tenants who defaulted will have to pay on the roughly seven years remaining of their lease agreements. 

“What we’ve seen is there is significant demand to fill those spaces back up, so we’ve already got quite a bit of interest to be a part of that project,” Dodson said.  While he could not say what new tenants may be coming in to fill the space, Dodson said it has “always been the focus” to rent space in the EastPoint Project to African American entrepreneurs.

PATRICE ONWUKA: Black Businesses Are Getting Crushed Under The Biden-Harris Economic Agenda

A new report claims black-owned businesses, like those here in New Jersey, are being crushed under the Biden-Harris administration. While the nation’s top officials travel the country trying to paint a pretty picture, the reality is, businesses here are hurting.

High taxes, inflation, lower customer spending, and higher costs for rent and energy bills are hurting all businesses, but this report says they aren’t hurting as bad as black-owned businesses.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s multistate economic tour stopped in Michigan this month to tout the administration’s record for black Americans. The start of the tour coincided with National Small Business Week.

The Biden administration tries to hide it, but the economic numbers show that Bidenomics has handicapped black businesses.

Small enterprises are struggling with high costs, high interest rates and increased regulations, driving many black business owners to reconsider for whom to cast their vote this November.

One day before the vice president touched down in the battleground state of Georgia, a New York Times article detailed how black small business owners viewed the Biden administration’s efforts, and it wasn’t positive. Thirty-two-year-old Atlanta-based tech entrepreneur Kimberly Jolasun, pressed by high interest rates that tripled her monthly payments on credit used to start her business, said that she was ready to consider voting for a Republican candidate.

Owners of the nation’s 2.6 million black businesses are likely weighing whether a Biden or Trump policy agenda will improve the economy and their firms’ prospects. They don’t have to think back far.

From 2017 to 2020, the number of black businesses grew by 13.64%, eclipsing the 0.53% growth in all businesses during that time period. Those black-owned businesses grossed $141.1 billion in revenue in 2020 and employed 1.321 million people.

Black women did even better during Trump’s presidency. They started businesses at a rate of 18.14% between 2017 and 2020, outpacing the growth in women-owned businesses overall (9.06%) and black-owned businesses.

Black businesses rebounded from pandemic losses, but face a very different economic climate under President Biden. Business owners are aware of the pressures on their businesses and can connect the dots back to poor leadership.

In 2023, black-owned startups rated their financial situation as “poor” more than other demographic groups, according to Federal Reserve survey data. They were also most likely to have trouble paying operating expenses, gaining access to credit, and making payments on debt due to interest rates.

These economic realities help explain the erosion of support for President Biden among black voters. It’s a trend the Biden administration seeks to fix, though that will be a challenge. Wall Street Journal polling in six battleground states finds that, as of April, Biden is winning 68% of black voters, but he carried 91% of this demographic in 2020. President Trump has now garnered support from 30% of black men and 47% of Latino men.

The administration’s exaggerations of post-pandemic job creation gloss over the higher costs of living that force many Americans to take on multiple jobs to pay bills. More women than men work multiple jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and that number is rising each month.

Inflation, which touched off in mid-2021 after the American Rescue Plan was enacted and reached 40-year highs in June 2022, has affected all households, but the racial disparities are acute. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, black and Hispanic households experienced “steadily higher price increases relative to the overall average between early 2021 and June 2022.” These groups spent larger shares of their budget on transportation, food, and shelter than other demographics — spending categories that have been hit worst by inflation.

While inflation disparities began to narrow as the consumer price index (CPI) rose at a slower pace in 2023, the recent acceleration in the CPI does not signal that black households or small businesses can expect to return to pre-pandemic inflation levels any time soon. High costs and high interest rates on mortgages and loans are weighing heavily on small enterprises.

Small business optimism sits at its lowest level since December 2012, according to the National Federation of Independent Business’s Optimism Index. Over a third of owners rank inflation as the single most important problem in operating their business. They are also grappling with weakening sales, unfilled positions and rising labor costs.

Add to this increased regulation, from overtime rules to energy policies that make doing business more costly, and new restrictions on franchising and independent contracting that heighten uncertainty and threaten small business models.

Entrepreneurs like 34-year-old Atlanta-area real estate entrepreneur, Ray Woods, recognize that “America has been built on capitalism,” and will support the policymaker who “understands business.” Given the past seven years, the Trump and Biden economic records speak for themselves.

Patrice Onwuka is the director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at Independent Women’s Forum (iwf.org/CEO) and co-host of WMAL’s O’Connor & Company.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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There’s a change of ownership taking place when it comes to new business creation in the United States. Nationally, applications for new businesses swelled in from 2019 to 2022, according to a new report from Brookings. Black and Latino business ownership grew, while the share of businesses with white owners remained flat.

Black business owners went from making up only 5% of U.S. business-owning families in 2019 to 8% in 2022, according to the Brookings report.

While the Pittsburgh region kept pace with the national trend of new business creation — with a 37% increase in new business formation during the same time period — southwestern Pennsylvania lags when it comes to the diversity of entrepreneurs responsible for the surge.

For example, the Black business ownership rate was 2.3 businesses per 1,000 people in the seven-county Pittsburgh metro area, according to 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey. That’s below the national rate of 3.3 Black owned businesses per 1,000 people.

The authors of the Brookings report say it’s important to take note of the national trend taking place when it comes to the diversity of business ownership in the U.S., as the shift has the potential to squeeze long-standing wealth gaps.

“Business ownership is a substantial part of wealth for a lot of white households,” said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings and co-author of the report. “The more we can see Black households and Latino households also own this kind of wealth, means that if bad things happen in the housing market, if bad things happen in the stock market, they still have this other form of wealth that can help them to buffer these shocks.”

And local stakeholders say they’d like to see a similar trend take hold in our region.

True opportunity

“I think the numbers are the numbers,” said Majestic Lane, chief equity officer at Allegheny Conference on Community Development. “But I do see some progress.”

One of these areas of progress Lane points to is the growth of micro businesses. These are businesses that have fewer than 10 employees, do most of their business online and are often run out of someone’s home.

“We’re seeing a rise in that segment,” said Barãta A. Bey, president of the African American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania. “Surprisingly, that is being led by black women. And it’s growing. Now, when you’re thinking of businesses with a brick and mortar location — they’re not faring as well here in Pittsburgh.”

Small businesses looking to move into a physical location can get a boost from the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s rent abatement program. It pays up to 50% of the monthly lease up to $2,000. Small businesses have to meet some criteria, which include being actively engaged in the negotiation of a lease.

Other local support comes from nonprofits such as Catapult of Greater Pittsburgh, which offer programs aimed at wealth building and business development. This includes a one-year program to help minority entrepreneurs start or grow a retail business. Ascender, a Pittsburgh-based business incubator and co-working space, recently offered small grants of up to $5,000 to help local Black and Latino-owned small businesses.

“It comes down to true opportunity,” Bey said. “Doing business with the larger companies that can provide those opportunities and those contracts and those partnerships to help these smaller businesses to scale.”

Capital challenge

One of the biggest barriers Pittsburgh’s Black entrepreneurs face is equitable access to money to fund and sustain their businesses.

“There’s no lack of interest of Black and brown people starting companies,” Lane said. “It’s that, historically, there has been a lack of access to capital.”

How banks have dealt with the Black community shapes the challenges Black entrepreneurs face when it comes to accessing commercial credit. “Institutions can look at Black-owned businesses differently,” Bey said. For example, lenders tend to grade them more unfavorably on certain criteria during the loan-underwriting process, he said.

Increasing access to capital for Black business owners could be a boon for the region’s growth. Bringing the ownership rate of Black businesses in line with the rest of the nation could result in 200 new businesses and employ an estimated 2,000 people in the region, according to an analysis of Census data by the Allegheny Conference. In addition, the hypothetical growth could boost the Gross Regional Product of the region by nearly $360 million, according to economic modeling done by the Conference.

“I think there’s an economic imperative when we look at a lot of the places across the country that are growing,” Lane said. “It’s also where you see a comparative large amount of Black and Latinx business ownership.”