Iola-Scandinavia recipient of $110,000 under Main Street Bounceback

By Erik Gunn, Wisconsin Examiner

A pandemic aid program that gave nearly 10,000 small businesses across the state a boost of $10,000 each would get a boost of its own under legislation that got a public hearing this week.

The legislation, AB-963 / SB-891, would turn the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. (WEDC) Main Street Bounceback initiative into a continuing source of small-business economic development grants.

“The strength of this program is that it helps meet capital needs that would otherwise go unmet, and helps businesses to stay in business, to expand, and especially to populate these empty storefronts that have made our Main Streets less vibrant,” Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), who co-authored the bill with Rep. Alex Joers (D-Middleton), testified Wednesday at an Assembly Tourism Committee public hearing.

“We need to continue prioritizing these investments in our communities,” Joers said.

Launched in 2021 with funds from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA),  Main Street Bounceback was aimed at helping small businesses move into vacant commercial spaces in downtowns across Wisconsin.

Sam Rikkers, WEDC deputy secretary and chief operating officer, said the two-year Main Street Bounce Back program surprised even its designers with its success. The initial allotment was $50 million that went to 5,000 businesses, Rikkers told lawmakers. Demand far exceeded that original target, and Gov. Tony Evers authorized two more allotments of $25 million each, bringing the total invested in the program to $100 million.

The program stopped taking applications at the end of 2022. By the time it ended, “nearly 9,500 businesses and nonprofits in all 72 counties had received grants,” Rikkers testified.

The grant recipients weren’t the only beneficiaries. “These grants brought in renewed excitement for their downtowns,” Rikkers said. The influx of businesses “encouraged people to linger, to dine, to shop and to spend money in their own communities.”

Seeking $25M per year

The new bill would appropriate $25 million per year in general purpose state revenue for the current two-year budget cycle to WEDC to help small businesses open new locations or expand. While the original program included nonprofit organizations, the bill would limit the program to for-profit businesses. In other respects it calls for the new program to be largely modeled on Main Street Bounceback.

Shawn Phetteplace of Main Street Alliance, a small business organizing and advocacy group, said many recipients “are people who have a hard time getting capital from traditional banking sources.”

The businesses that are in small community downtowns pay taxes that fund local services such as schools, Phetteplace said. “Ultimately, this is about meeting a real need that exists.”

Rep. David Armstrong (R-Rice Lake), who besides being a member of the Assembly is the economic development director for Barron County, said there were 134 Bounceback grant recipients in his county.

“Was the program successful? Absolutely,” Armstrong told the committee.

Armstrong emphasized that recipients should have a clear business plan and three years of financial projections. “I think the biggest challenge is understanding that 10 grand isn’t going to fix all your problems,” he said.

He also suggested enlisting regional Small Business Development Centers or other groups to vet recipients and give them guidance in sharpening their plans. Rikkers said WEDC’s partnerships with regional planning commissions and other local organizations provided that sort of help and enabled WEDC to set and stick to grant application deadlines.

The original grants were, in most cases, just one element of a larger investment that a project would require. “It’s part of a capital stack,” Armstrong told the committee.

“It’s not a make-or-break amount of money for a business,” said Daniel Smith, co-owner of Garver Events, based in the renovated Garver Feed Mill on Madison’s East Side. “But what it allowed us to do is to just take a breath after fighting through the pandemic and all that went with that.”

The redeveloped Garver mill had opened as an event space housing some on-premise businesses, anchored by an Ian’s Pizza outlet, in late 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic forced Garver Events to hunker down for months. The Bounceback grant was part of the road to recovery for the business.

“We took a breath and we decided the best way to use this money is to continue to do what we did best — investing in our community by bringing in musicians, artists and other makers throughout the area,” Smith told the Assembly committee.

Free music that Garver Events sponsors “creates a space for the community to gather,” Smith said. “It also creates a buzz around the building that we’re in” — a boon to the dozen establishments that share the premises. “So we were able to take these funds and turn them into something that was community-building and substantial for our business and for other businesses.”

Enthusiastic business owners

Joers and Roys received pages and pages of written testimony from around the state from satisfied recipients of the Bounceback grants. Others who spoke at Wednesday’s hearing had success stories, too.

In Appleton, Julie Blair was running an independent recording label called Crutch of Memory from her home. A vacant VFW hall in the community caught her eye, and her $10,000 Main Street Bounceback grant helped her pay to move the business in there.

“It significantly increased our ability to interact with the community because we’re actually out of our house,” Blair told the committee. “It’s just it’s given us opportunities we wouldn’t have had otherwise. I’m really grateful.”

In West Bend, 87 businesses applied for and got Bounceback grants and 72 of those remain open, said Jay Shambeau, West Bend city administrator. “Our Main Street was maybe a little tired and in need of some rejuvenation before this program started,” Shambeau testified. “We’re now a really thriving downtown.”

Shambeau said multifamily building construction completed or underway downtown or nearby will add space for 500 households — development that he suggested was spurred by the Bounceback projects in the community. He said he would welcome seeing the program resume.

Jessica Wildes, the assistant city administrator and previously West Bend’s communications and economic development director, said the city’s Bounceback participants are a wide variety of businesses. There is a mini-golf course that was able to rehab after being largely dormant and an indoor gym tailored to the needs of young people on the autism spectrum.

“We have coffee shops, restaurants, even a shoe repair shop that expanded,” Wildes said. “It’s been a wonderful program. We’re asked about it often.”

Wildes said the city would benefit from resurrecting the program to help more businesses to meet the necessary startup costs if they have a chance to expand or move into new space. 

In Fond du Lac, 62 small businesses received Main Street Bounceback grants, said Amy Hansen, executive director of Downtown Fond du Lac Partnership, the community’s economic development nonprofit.

“We saw vacant spaces filling up, which brings vibrancy to all downtown businesses,” Hansen said. “To help with startup expenses is a game changer for many of these entrepreneurs.”

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