{"id":2989,"date":"2018-01-18T19:38:41","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T19:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/52.10.1.109\/?p=2989"},"modified":"2018-01-20T01:41:50","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T01:41:50","slug":"grants-rebates-and-a-street-level-m-b-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/?p=2989","title":{"rendered":"Grants, rebates and a \u2018street-level M.B.A.\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Darren Hollingsworth, the City of Englewood\u2019s economic-development manager, says his job is to bring jobs to the city. He spoke Sept. 12 to a group of business leaders. Photo by Peter Jones<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Englewood incentivizes its base of smaller businesses<\/i><\/h4>\n

BY PETER JONES<\/strong>
\nNEWS EDITOR<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Many small businesses fail to take full advantage of the benefits of doing business in a given city. Take Englewood, for example.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy job is jobs,\u201d said Darren Hollingsworth, the city\u2019s economic-development manager. \u201cMy job is to support jobs in the city of Englewood.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To help facilitate that mission, the City Council last year approved substantial changes to Englewood\u2019s city-sponsored economic-development efforts. To help get the word out, Hollingsworth spoke last week to the Greater Englewood Chamber of Commerce.<\/span><\/p>\n

A still-underutilized grants program, for one, is targeted at businesses during two key phases of their development. Start-ups in operation for less than two years may be eligible for $2,500 that may be spent on virtually any early expense that a small business might incur.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a free grant,\u201d Hollingsworth clarified. \u201cIt\u2019s a grant to support the creation of jobs. \u2026 It\u2019s to invest in growth in the community and raise the tide.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Two years later, the business may also qualify for an acceleration grant of up to $5,000 to help take the operation to its next level.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne example,\u201d Hollingsworth said, \u201csomeone wanted to add pizza to their restaurant and wanted to have a couple of new employees added with the delivery of this new service, and that new pizza oven would require some improvements to the building.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If training is what is needed, grants of about $50 to $500 are available to small businesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Englewood also partners with the U.S. Small Business Administration on an Emerging Leaders educational program.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, it\u2019s a street-level M.B.A.,\u201d Hollingsworth said. \u201cIt\u2019s an intensive multi-week session that allows a business owner to take a very deep dive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Many businesses in Englewood may not even know that the Colorado Small Business Development Center has an office in the Englewood Civic Center, where local business owners can attend workshops and receive free and confidential one-on-one consulting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marcia McGilley, SBDC\u2019s executive director, said consultants help entrepreneurs take a little bit of time to think about their businesses in a new way.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an hour session, and we ask you the questions,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat\u2019s keeping you up at night? One of my favorite questions on there is, what clients do you need to fire?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to grants, tax credits may also be at the ready, especially since the entire city of Englewood now sits in an enterprise zone that qualifies resident businesses for credits in a number of categories, from job creation to employee healthcare benefits.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey can be very substantial. If a solopreneur starts up and creates one job within the city, that\u2019s an $1,100 tax credit,\u201d Hollingsworth said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Another incentive program rebates taxes and permit fees up to $20,000 when businesses retain as few as five employees.<\/span><\/p>\n

Randy Penn, executive director of the Englewood Chamber and a former city mayor, said these sorts of proactive approaches to business retention recently kept Colorado Neurological Institute in the city.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey were ready to move out of the city. We sat them down \u2026 and gave them a lot of options and they stayed in Englewood,\u201d Penn said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Brad Nixon, owner of the city\u2019s Nixon\u2019s Coffee and Share Good Foods, noted that many businesses in Englewood have little idea of the city programs available to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe success of our business in town has largely been by virtue of the fact that we\u2019ve chosen to be involved, to get involved at all sorts of different levels,\u201d he said. <\/span><\/p>\n

For more information, visit englwoodgov.org\/doing-
\nbusiness.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Englewood incentivizes its base of smaller businesses BY PETER JONES NEWS EDITOR Many small businesses fail to take full advantage of the benefits of doing business in a given city. Take Englewood, for example. \u201cMy job is jobs,\u201d said Darren Hollingsworth, the city\u2019s economic-development manager. \u201cMy job is to support jobs in the city …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,65,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-chambers","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}