WBEZ | small businesses

Emanuel vows ordinance to trim business licenses

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:23:13 -0500

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is promising an ordinance that would trim the types of business licenses the city requires by 60 percent. He said the measure, planned for City Council introduction on Wednesday, would cut the number from 117 to 49 and make it easier for companies to operate in the city.

“I believe in oversight and regulation but I also believe in small businesses,” Emanuel said at a news conference Tuesday in the city’s Logan Square neighborhood. “They are the lifeblood of economic activity and job creation in our neighborhoods and our cities. I want all these business owners focused on their customer, not City Hall.”

A statement from the mayor’s office said the ordinance would help a range of businesses. The statement said pet store owners until now have needed one license to sell goldfish and another to sell fishbowls or fish food. It said some automobile repair shops have needed as many as four licenses to work on cars, store chemicals, hold tires and sell windshield wipers.

Rosemary Krimbel, commissioner of the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, said restaurants also stood to gain. “Right now they need a retail food establishment license to operate,” she said. “But often, if they’re selling a cookbook or maybe some hot sauce or maybe just T-shirts, they also need a limited business license. They’ll no longer need that second license. That license costs $250.”

Emanuel said the reforms would mean fewer fines on business owners. Their annual savings would top $2 million, he added. That could mean less city revenue. Emanuel insisted the ordinance would spur economic growth that would make up the difference.

The ordinance would allow city inspectors to spend less time citing companies for having the wrong paperwork and more time cracking down on illegal business operations, the mayor’s office said. The proposal also includes new tools for inspectors to focus on irresponsible companies, such as those that sell tobacco to minors or defraud consumers, the mayor’s office added.

The legislation would also give the city more flexibility to provide novel sorts of businesses with a temporary permit allowing them to open shop while the city figured out how to license them. Emanuel held the news conference at one of those businesses, Logan Square Kitchen, a shared cooking facility at 2333 N. Milwaukee Ave. The owner has nearly drowned in Chicago red tape.

The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce immediately hailed the plan, praising the promised flexibility for startup companies. “One of the biggest challenges for businesses in Chicago is to obtain all the necessary licenses to be able to open their doors,” said Jerry Roper, the chamber’s chief, in a statement.

The mayor’s office declined to release a draft of the legislation on Tuesday afternoon and said officials have yet to finalize it.

Tackling Jews’ economic woes, one business card at a time

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:00:00 -0500

It's hard to feel like there's much any of us can do to help fix our economy these days. But in north suburban Skokie, an unlikely young man is taking a stab at it by playing a sort of business matchmaker within his Jewish community.

If you encounter a 22-year old college graduate at a job fair these days, you'd expect to hear a tale of woe. Endless job searches, fruitless leads, and a mountain of college debt. Well, not so with Shalom Klein.

At a job fair at North Side College Preparatory High School last week, he was the guy soliciting resumes. Often from people much older than him, which he says felt a bit weird sometimes.

Klein's appearance belies his young age. He wears a beard, a suit, he has a yarmulke on his head in the tradition of observant male Jews, and he carries a leather-bound folder.

Klein's here to recruit people like Don Richie — a technical writer — and also some of the companies here, to his job fair. It'll be Thursday night in Skokie. It's called The Business Event. It's the culminating event of an organization Klein started a year ago, called Jewish B2B Networking.

Klein questions Richie about what kind of work he’s looking for.

“Well, I’m a technical writer,” Richie said. “Really, so instruction manuals...?” “That's right,” Richie said. “Oh, you know what a technical writer does. That's great.”

Klein started it to hook up small businesses in Chicago's Jewish community. Most of them are on Chicago's North Side and Skokie. It's his own sort of Jewish "stimulus plan."

“Having gone to school in Rogers Park, living in Skokie, I see Devon Street, I see Dempster, and I see the all the vacant storefronts, I see the crime that's going up, and I completely attribute that to the strain of businesses and the numbers of people that are unemployed,” Klein said.

Klein's fix: networking. It may sound simplistic, but he thinks it leads to jobs and economic growth.

“I don't have a background in economic development and job creation, I'm not a career coach. But I've come up with more of the ... I guess the on-the-street version of how to address the problems.”

In fact, Klein's background is in something entirely different. He went to college to be a rabbi. There's another reason he seems an unlikely candidate to take on these big issues:

Klein had to apply for a job himself when he was working in New York, but count himself as fortunate as he works in a family business.

Klein works at his dad's accounting, bookkeeping and debt-collections firm. He'll probably run it after his dad retires. So he's never had to worry about unemployment like many of the people he tries to help. But Klein says the idea for Jewish B2B came from expanding his family business. He went on a big networking spree to find new small business clients.

“I realized that so many of our clients, friends, and family, needed to connect with each other. A realtor needs a photographer to take pictures of their listings, a photographer needs a lawyer, a lawyer needs an accountant. It was just a matter of connecting the dots,” he said.

Klein started with a smallish networking event at a Kosher restaurant in Skokie. He expected about 20 people to show up. Instead, nearly 80 came.

“And the next day I walked into a coffee shop, and I saw two meetings going on from the day prior. And I knew I hit on something big,” he said.

Klein expects his latest event will draw 2,500 people. Among them –some heavyweights: Congressmen Jan Schakowsky and Robert Dold, and Illinois Lt. Governor Sheila Simon.

Klein admits there are some mornings he wakes up and is like, How did I get here? “I don't know what it was. I don't know what it was exactly that brought so many people together. I know how to plan an event. I know what food to order, I know where to do it, I know how to promote an event.”

One more thing: the business card exchange. Before leaving, this WBEZ reporter gave her card to Klein. Klein in turned pulled out a nearly one-inch stack of cards.

“Every single day I meet with a lot of people. Today, Odette, I think you're my 12^th meeting of the day,” Klein said.

It was only 2:00 p.m.

Housing groups salute banking giant for rehab deal

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 20:59:00 -0600

One of the nation’s largest banks Friday provided details about an agreement with some nonprofit groups in Chicago-area neighborhoods devastated by foreclosures.

The deal, revealed Wednesday by WBEZ, stems from the collapse of Oak Park-based banking chain FBOP Corp. The company’s flagship, Park National Bank, was known for donations and loans in low-income areas. In 2009, federal authorities took over FBOP and sold it to Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, the parent of U.S. Bank.

U.S. Bancorp said it couldn’t fill Park National’s shoes in the community. After protests, though, the banking giant last fall started negotiating with a coalition of nonprofit housing groups. The two sides reached a deal a few weeks ago and kept it quiet until this week.

U.S. Bancorp is promising $600,000 in interest-free loans this year to buy six foreclosed homes in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood and Maywood, a suburb nearby. Community groups will then renovate them and sell them at cost. If the effort breaks even, U.S. Bancorp will lend another $800,000 next year and $1 million more in 2013, bringing the total to $2.4 million.

To celebrate the deal, U.S. Bancorp officials flew in for a gathering outside an Oak Park branch Friday. They included Richard Hartnack, vice-chairman of the company’s consumer and small-business banking.

Could this agreement be a model for banks and community groups to soften effects of the nation’s housing crisis? Or is the deal just a U.S. Bancorp public-relations ploy? We got a chance to ask Hartnack at the celebration and included his responses in this WBEZ segment:

bank2way110304cm.mp3

U.S. Bancorp cuts deal with housing advocates

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 11:00:00 -0600

One of the nation’s largest financial firms will fund some nonprofit groups in Chicago-area neighborhoods devastated by foreclosures.

Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, the parent of U.S. Bank, has faced pressure from community groups in West Side neighborhoods and nearby suburbs since 2009, when it purchased an Oak Park-based banking chain, FBOP Corp., as part of a federal rescue.

FBOP units included Park National Bank, a Chicago-area lender known for charity and investment in low-income areas. U.S. Bancorp said it couldn’t fill those shoes, but last fall started negotiating with a cluster of West Side groups called the Coalition to Save Community Banking.

Now they’ve inked an agreement. U.S. Bancorp will put up $600,000 for rehabbing six foreclosed homes, according to the coalition’s Rev. Catherine Palmer. Three of the homes are in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood and three are in Maywood, a suburb nearby.

Palmer says U.S. Bancorp will contribute a smaller sum for housing advocacy by the coalition and four other groups: Bethel New Life, Inc.; South Austin Coalition; Westside Health Authority; and Maywood-based Housing Helpers, Inc.

U.S. Bancorp spokeswoman Lisa Clark confirmed the two sides have struck a deal, but she declined to provide details.

John Taylor, president and CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition in Washington D.C., praises the bank. “The fact that it’s willing to make some commitments to local organizations to help them do their work is a good sign.”

But Taylor offers some cautionary advice: “The groups need to continue to work together to make sure that the bank is indeed making the loans for mortgages and, for that matter, for small businesses and needs that are in the community.”

U.S. Bancorp and the coalition are planning to unveil the agreement this Friday.