With just 11 weeks under her belt, Cleveland’s new Economic Development Director Tracey Nichols has proposed six new programs to bring more business and revenue to the city. The programs are a mixture of businesses loans and grants to entice people to buy vacant property, build green, and improve retail businesses in neighborhoods.
Tracey Nichols: In our programs we have given tools that say if you come here we’ll give you a loan, a forgivable loan that will write down that cost of the obsolescent building or the environmental contamination, asbestos etc.
Though the vacant property program is a flagship city program, Nichols also wants City Council to expand downtown business district grants to the entire city, and change minimum number of newly created jobs from 25 to 5. Business loans would be capped at $50,000 a year.
Nichols hopes council will approve those changes before summer.
Tasha Flournoy, 90.3.