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New Connections for Small Businesses
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Business New Haven
4/15/2002
By: Anne-Marie Brungard
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The New Haven area offers an array of resources to help the business get off the ground or grow. Bussing entrepreneurs can get help and guidance from the Service Corps of Retired Engineers. Specialized services are available for minorities, start-ups and women from the Greater New Haven Business & Professional Association, the Regional Business Resource Center or the new Women's Business Development Center.
So what's missing? According to Sherri Killins, president and CEO of the nonprofit Empower New Haven, the Business Connection. Empower New Haven is renovating its fourth floor headquarters at 59 Elm Street to make way for the Business Connection learning center, a facility that will offer business education and training seminars and refer entrepreneurs to a wide range of resources for technical assistance. When fully outfitted, the center will have conference room, library and computer workstations with Internet access.
Killins emphasizes that there are two elements that will distinguish the business connection from other resource centers. Outreach will be done in the field and the center will track the progress of its clients providing valuable data that may give some insight on the needs of inner-city businesses.
The Business Connection was originally conceived through the governor's Initiative for a Competitive Inner City. The idea being to give inner-city business greater access to business planning services, said Odell E. Stewart, business connection manager.
“We are literally going door to door,” Stewart said. While knocking on doors to introduce business owners to the services, Stewart's goal over the next two years is for the business connection to reach out to 200 businesses along commercial strips within the six Empowerment Zone neighborhoods as well as Hamden and West Haven. Since it opened in January the business connection has made contact with 56 small businesses, conducting some initial assessments to determine unique needs and then referring the entrepreneur to area partners for individualized business planning services.
It is common knowledge that most businesses fail because of poor management or lack of capital, said Stewart. Can Business Connection turn that around?
Services being offered through the Business Connection include business counseling, workforce development, securing capital, site location, marketing and promotion and technical assistance including taxes and bookkeeping.
Empower New Haven and the Business Connection partners are committed to keeping commercial and industrial business activity strong in the Empower New Haven neighborhoods. This initiative brings together the Chamber of Commerce of Greater New
Haven, the City of New Haven's Small Business Initiative, the State of Connecticut Department of Economic Development and the Greater New Haven Business and Professional Association.
Corporate partners include the New Haven Savings Bank,
Fleet Bank, Peoples Bank, United Illuminating and First Union. Business Connection is also forging a relationship with the Spanish American Merchants Association, headquartered in Hartford.
Stewart describes that each of the partners brings something to the table. “Neighborhood businesses have unique needs.”
“The chamber gives us access to the larger business community. [We have] the experience in the empowerment zones, SBI can address tax issue and small business loans, while the Greater New Haven Business & Professional Association has a long history serving the underserved minority business community.
Stewart says “the Business Connection will function as a hub…each partner as a spoke on the wheel with the financial and corporate partners adding greater access and strength to the project.”
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