New York Metropolis is a giant metropolis of small companies — mother and pop retailers, bodegas, meals vans, eating places, and extra — and there’s no higher time for our companies to shine than the vacation season. The vacation season provides $500 million to the town’s financial system by means of elevated spending and foot visitors — and this goes again into New Yorkers’ pockets, making the town extra reasonably priced for working individuals.
Final yr, throughout a single day — Black Friday — over 1 million individuals visited Manhattan retail hubs like Bryant Park, Occasions Sq., and SoHo alone. Retail hubs like Jamaica and Flushing in Queens, Fordham Highway within the Bronx, and Metrotech in Brooklyn, all noticed year-over-year will increase in foot visitors on Black Friday as properly.
This knowledge additionally underscores the significance of the vacation purchasing season for our metropolis’s tourism sector. On Black Friday 2024, two-thirds of Occasions Sq. guests have been from exterior the town and roughly half have been from exterior the metro space. It ought to come as no shock that New York Metropolis retains its attraction as a world vacation vacation spot.
Because of steps our administration has taken to make our metropolis safer and extra livable, we are actually within the eighth straight quarter of crime declines and New York Metropolis now has probably the most small companies in our metropolis’s historical past.
Moreover, for the reason that begin of 2024, greater than 16,000 New Yorkers have attended a Jobs NYC Hiring Corridor, which has resulted in additional than 5,000 on-site interviews and over 2,000 conditional job gives. And since we all know financing and accessing capital is essential to the success of small companies, our NYC Small Enterprise Alternative Fund has awarded greater than $85 million in capital to 1,000 small companies since launching in 2023. In whole, our administration has facilitated greater than $350 million in financing to small enterprise homeowners and entrepreneurs since we got here into workplace lower than 4 years in the past.
At this time, a couple of in 4 companies working in New York Metropolis have been created below our administration. In January 2022, as considered one of my first actions as mayor, I signed the “Small Business Forward” Government Order to save lots of small companies an estimated $8.9 million in lowered fines and superior an education-first method to assist small companies survive. If you mix our efforts to chop crimson tape with our NYC Enterprise Categorical Service Workforce’s work serving to small companies navigate metropolis paperwork and keep away from charges and fines, we’ve saved small companies over $70 million.
Small companies are the cornerstone of our financial system and the center of our communities. They help households and assist the numerous numerous neighborhoods throughout our 5 boroughs thrive. I encourage each New Yorker to exit and help your neighborhood shops and spend domestically. New York Metropolis is the place goals are made, and we wish each small enterprise to get their slice of that dream and ship alternative for the working-class individuals of our metropolis.
