Since last Fall, teams of University of Minnesota students have been surveying and working with Latino businesses between Chicago Ave. and the Mississippi river. These comments focus on their findings for Latino businesses centered in the Bloomington/Lake area.
Almost all the Latino businesses around Bloomington and Lake are pretty new. A majority of the businesses surveyed by the students said they had opened less than three years ago. This means that these businesses have thrown all their cash and then some into getting the doors open, and have no fat reserves to live on when times get lean, say during a repaving project. Almost all the businesses also depend mostly on a Latino customer base - this is different from many of the Latino businesses located east of Hiawatha.
When asked what were their biggest concerns, most answers centered around a blend of crime/parking/lighting that runs like this:
Many businesses reported that they have had customers that were victims of crime while visiting their store. Some were jumped when coming out, others had cars that had been vandalized.
Some Latino residents are undocumented, and are afraid to call the police , even when they are victims, for fear that they could trigger a sequence of events that could lead to them being deported back to Mexico.
Several businesses said that they thought some criminals may be targetting Latino customers because they thought Latino crime victims would be less likely to call the police.
So if you are a Latino customer, and you are afraid of being a victim of crime, where do you want to park? Right in front of the store, so you can run right in and out, and so you can keep an eye on your car.
If you are a businessperson whose customers want to park right in front of your store, you will be particularly affected if you lose your parking - for instance, in a repaving project. And you are likely to be affected if the parking in front of your store is lost to streetscaping plans.
Latino businesses also wanted more lights on Lake St. to make it safer for their customers. Streetscaping offers a great chance to put up lighting that meets the Latino businessperson's needs. However, the lighting situation will also put even more pressure on Latino businesspeople during the repaving. Many of the sidestreets in Powderhorn are virtually pitch black at night - potentially very uninviting to Latino customers who cannot park in front of their favorite store. Will these customers be lost during repaving?
The Lake St. repaving and long-term streetscaping plans could well have an even greater impact on Latino businesses than on many other institutions.
Meetings on the future of Lake St. have been held in Spanish, and dedicated Latino businesspeople such at Manny Gonzalez have put long hours into planning the repaving and streetscape. Nevertheless, a majority of the Latino businesses surveyed by the students said that they knew little or nothing about the repaving. This was particularly true of free-standing stores not located in the Mercado Central.
The students also found that there was a lack of detailed information about the repaving and streetscape available in Spanish. The students have translated several documents, and they are now being distributed to Latino businesses. Much of this information is technical and difficult to understand even for English speaking businesspeople. No wonder many Latino businesses did not know much about the repaving.
The students also heard several stories of immigrant businesses who were so impacted by other repaving projects such as at Nicollet that they were forced to close
There is supposed to be some sort of assistance available to immigrant and other vulnerable businesses, but the details have not been worked out. One of the complaints heard from businesses in other repaving areas has been that the assistance was either much less than expected or the aid was very delayed.
These Latino and other immigrant businesses have played a critical role in the revitalization of Lake St. They have a special set of needs and priorities. If we want the Latino business community to be strengthened and not damaged by the Lake St. repaving and streetscape, then we must do everything we can to engage all the Latino businesses. And to meet their needs. In particular, we need to reach out to those free-standing businesses that are not part of such organizations as Mercado Central.
Jay Clark Cooper
P.S. Several businesses have reported that the streets are a lot quieter this summer than in past years. The is probably, at least in part, because of the intensive efforts of the Minneapolis Police department at Bloomington and Lake.
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