August 20, 2025
If you close your eyes and imagine your neighborhood, what do you see? I’m betting that among the parks and streets, the schools and homes, there are likely a number of local shops and businesses in your mental picture.
These small neighborhood establishments - the corner stores, cafes, ice cream stands, bars, book stores, restaurants, banks and laundromats - are what make up the fabric of our neighborhoods. They’re what make home feel like home.
As we all know, it’s harder than ever for these local businesses to survive. The COVID pandemic has had long after-effects on small enterprises, and the ongoing move to online retail makes it harder for local shops to turn a profit.
When businesses suffer, it’s not just a problem for the individual store. Businesses are often clustered along commercial corridors - from Grand Avenue to W. 7th, Wabasha to Cesar Chavez, St. Peter to Payne. When stores close or retail windows stay vacant, the entire corridor is diminished.
The good news is that all across the city, there are organizations that support individual businesses and the commercial corridors of which they’re a part. In some neighborhoods, there are long-standing or newly emerging business associations, and in others, the District Council fills this role.
These organizations promote their corridors, host community events to support local businesses, invest in signage, lighting and flowers to make corridors more inviting, and so on. This work helps individual businesses thrive, makes our city a more vibrant place, and provides the best defense against the onslaught of online retail. After all, who wants to sit inside clicking on Amazon when you can be out with your friends at Paws on Grand?
This great work can’t happen without support, but until recently, the City had few options to help. That changed last year when the City Council created a new fund to support commercial corridors (currently named the “Commercial Corridor Organization Assistance Program” or “CCOAP” - naming isn’t really our strong suit). CCOAP makes up to $70,000 available to business support organizations or District Councils along all 17 commercial corridors in St. Paul. The funds are flexible, so recipients can use them in whatever way they think best. The application process is simple and non-competitive; we have the dollars to support every corridor, so all organizations need to do is tell us how they plan to spend them. And staff are bringing organizations together to share ideas for how to support their districts.
We just received an update on how CCOAP is doing after formally launching five months ago and the results are outstanding. Unlike some of our other pilot programs, where the goals are noble but we struggle to get dollars out the door, this funding is getting to the organizations who need it quickly and it’s being used for a whole host of great activities.
The early success of CCOAP is a good reminder about how to use city dollars most effectively. When we take the time to identify the real problem, ask those doing the work what they need, and make our programs easy to use - we can do a lot of good.
I’m committed to keeping CCOAP going far into the future and I hope you’ll enjoy the results as you walk along a commercial corridor near you.