LYNN — A grant of $81,132 has been awarded to the city in its efforts to allow for safe and profitable outdoor vending as restaurants and retail businesses try to recover from the COVID-19 shutdown.
The city received the grant in partnership with Lynn Main Streets and was awarded through the Massachusetts Department of Transportation Shared Streets and Spaces Grant Program.
With these funds, up to 10 locations will receive outdoor dining/vending capabilities to expand on their services. Businesses were paired with a local artist, youth group and/or member of the local creative community to assist in beautifying their spaces and celebrating their uniqueness, making them identifiable as true local assets around which the community can rally, said Tia Cole of Lynn Main Street, who is also director of city engagement.
Creative Reopenings is a program that adds creative community place-keeping elements to compliant outdoor infrastructure, such as jersey barriers erected to protect outdoor dining areas.
“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.”
Cole and John Andrews, who owns Creative Collective — an organization that matches artists with community projects and initiatives — have worked together on the Creative Reopenings project to make sure local artists get the work in beautifying city project sites.
“It’s things like murals on the jersey barriers, (Department of Water and Power) sites, decorative lights in the bistros, things like that,” said Andrews. “We want to make sure we get local artists involved. One of the things about the COVID shutdown is that work for them just dried up.”
Supporting the small business community has always been an essential part of creating an inclusive and sustainable downtown, said Cole.
“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,” she said.
“Some of the hardest hit members of our community have been our small and minority-owned businesses.”
A MassInc poll reported that the smallest businesses face the steepest road to recovery, with a majority of them seeing declines greater than 50 percent for the first part of the year, compared to 35 percent 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,” Cole said.
“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 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 to raise additional funding and support for this community-response initiative.
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].
