New Business Incentives Downtown

In order to encourage more businesses to set up shop downtown, Chuck Reed and 3 council members are proposing several new incentives for business owners. Here are the benefits entrepreneurs would experience if the proposal succeeds:

• No license fees for new small businesses.
• No parking fees for two years for businesses that sign or renew a downtown lease.
• Potential tax reductions.
• Defer impact fees over an extended period of time (what developers pay for infrastructure improvements).

It's no secret that opening a business downtown can require dealing with plenty of red tape and inefficient city policies that slow down the process substantially. Hopefully if the proposal goes through it will also allow new businesses to open their doors much faster as there is some mention of committing additional resources to development. They mayor implies that the city's development office would operate "at the speed of business" to help move things along.