Small businesses in Oakland are navigating a challenging time. From the ebbs and flows of the COVID-19 pandemic to recurring break-ins and robberies, many establishments have faced declining foot traffic, rising operation costs, and public safety concerns.
Last June, the city’s Economic and Workforce Development Department—which works to revitalize the local economy—appointed Cristy Johnston Limón as its deputy director. She also manages the department’s business development division, which provides programs and services to help expand and retain local businesses.
The Oaklandside had the opportunity to sit down with Johnston Limón to get a sense of what the current small business landscape in Oakland looks like and what merchants and entrepreneurs can look forward to this year. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited for clarity:
When announcing your new role, the city stated in a news release: “Cristy brings to this role more than 20 years of experience in commercial corridor revitalization, nonprofit leadership, and organization capacity building, as well as a deep knowledge of Oakland and its communities.” Can you describe how the small business landscape in Oakland has evolved over the years?
It’s no secret that it’s been a very challenging time for the small business community following the pandemic. Small businesses suffered quite a bit of revenue loss as a result of having to suspend or significantly shift the way they operate. As a result, we’re now seeing the small business community trying to recover lost revenue and institutionalize a new normal.
We’re also hearing from the small business community that most challenges have largely been around cleanliness, public safety, and how the city is being responsive to their concerns and communicating that with the public.
Since residents are also engaging differently with society, small businesses have had to shift the way they’re operating to meet the need for “third spaces.” There are many folks working hybrid who want to leave their home and find places to work and recreate. So, we’re seeing businesses shift their hours and their offerings to provide a variety of ways to engage with the community.
To better understand businesses’ needs, we’re setting different data standards so that we can gather business license data exclusive of property owners or landlords, who must also file business licenses and pay business taxes.
Pre-pandemic, there were 44,800 recorded businesses. After extracting about 20,000 landlords from our definition, I’m currently working with about 30,000 businesses across a variety of sectors. Most of them have fewer than five employees and generate less than $250,000 a year in revenue. So, we have this cluster of small businesses that comprise the majority of the business community in Oakland.
I’m curious about how accurate those totals are. In many communities of color, for example, there may be street vendors who do not have business licenses. Do those numbers take into account unlicensed businesses or businesses with expired licenses?
That’s something I’ve been wondering about as well. Some businesses may be operating without a license, or they aren’t necessarily reporting revenues. To be honest, I don’t know.
One of the exciting things that my data team has been doing is mapping out all the business license data and creating heat maps in every city council district to show where businesses and employers are concentrated. With that information, we’re rolling out an economic development strategy for the city over the next five years.
What exactly is an economic development strategy?
We already have regional data, such as the Metropolitan Statistical Area report, but what we’re trying to do is look at how Oakland is doing. So, the thesis of the economic development strategy report is, how is the city creating a racially just and equitable economy?
Our department’s first economic development strategy was for 2018 to 2020, but it used business data from a 2012 census survey. Over the last couple of years, we’ve been collecting data that is Oakland-specific so that we’re not just relying on old regional census data. Generally, a city will put out a strategy every five years. We were towards the tail end of our second strategy when the pandemic hit.
The city is now working on a new five-year economic development strategy: the 2024-2029 Economic Development Action Plan. Among other things, the plan will focus on growing the city’s economy in an equitable way and present strategies for supporting the business community and our neighborhoods.
We’re also looking at the city’s business license data and 2023 American Census Survey data so we can have a better sense of the population, the number of minority-owned businesses, the breakdown by gender, and how things have changed over the years. We’ll be sharing updated data, from the number of businesses and how many people they employ and what sectors to the changes we’ve seen in the city’s demographics and economic mobility.
For example, we like to look at how many female immigrants there are in the community because we know that entrepreneurs tend to be immigrants and women. That way, we can tailor our programs to offer more support to particular populations.
It’s no secret that many small businesses in Oakland are dealing with crime. How is the city working to improve public safety, particularly for small businesses?
Small business owners are our heroes. Many of them remained open during the pandemic and have continued to provide spaces where we can get our basic needs and services met, so, of course, we want to do what we can to protect them.
One of the things we’re considering is how we can partner with organizations that have community ambassador programs. We want to convene them to share best practices so we can better deploy those ambassadors and expand the program to other communities, particularly those that don’t have business improvement districts.
For example, on Hegenberger in East Oakland, we’re partnering with the Black Cultural Zone to provide community ambassadors there. The ambassadors work closely with the small business community, do wellness checks, and help folks report incidents.
But I think the main thing is just being able to convene the small business community so that they’re communicating and collaborating. They can talk to each other, organize, advocate, and demand that the city provide responsive services. We want them to contact us and let us know what they need help with. The idea is to layer on these different ways of creating safety by building community, not necessarily policing our way out of crime.
Can you share any progress on the Downtown Oakland Specific Plan?
We’ve been working closely with the Planning & Building Department to create a Downtown Oakland Specific Plan, which has been about nine years in the making. It addresses some of the proposed zoning and regulatory changes aimed at making it easier to start and grow businesses here.
The Black Arts Movement Business District is also a part of downtown, so the plan will lay out strategies to retain Black-owned businesses and legacy businesses and make sure we’re not displacing them.
In the coming weeks, [the Planning and Building Department] will be taking the Downtown Oakland Specific Plan to the City Council, which we’re also really excited about.
What are some of the sectors that have seen growth post-shutdown?
We’re seeing a growing arts and entertainment sector, but that’s because we lost a lot of those jobs during the pandemic.
The health care sector is also one of the biggest employers right now because the definition [of health care] includes in-home service providers, as well as folks who work at La Clínica de La Raza and senior care facilities.
And we’re continuing to see growth in the construction and transportation and logistics industries.
What are your biggest priorities this year in terms of supporting small businesses in Oakland?
Our first priority is to get out the funds for the Facade and Tenant Improvement Grant Program. We still have about $2.8 million that we need to push out the door. To do that, we’ve hired more people for our Neighborhood Business Assistance Program’s Spanish-speaking team.
Another priority is supporting Activate Oakland events. We have one event every month up until August across different corridors. We just had one earlier this week at Clinton Park to celebrate Lunar New Year, and it was great to see how busy it was.
We also just launched our Immigrant Micro Business Support Program. This was a partnership with the state to provide immigrant entrepreneurs—specifically, Indigenous, Guatemalan-speaking, and Vietnamese-speaking entrepreneurs—with monthly workshops around micro-food businesses through October. The idea is to support folks as they consider opening brick-and-mortars or upgrading food carts to food trucks so they can navigate health inspections and other hoops.
Also, Small Business Week is from April 28 to May 4, so we’ve been focused on recruiting presenters for workshops. We want to feature small business owners who want to run a public relations campaign or a special to encourage folks to shop local.
The Activate Oakland program has been a big success for many small business owners and residents who want to revitalize commercial corridors across the Town. Are there any similar initiatives or funding opportunities that merchants and residents can look forward to this year?
Nothing is set in stone yet, but we’re always looking for opportunities to support the small business community, particularly to address their most pressing needs, like making rent during slower months. We’re continuing to meet with community development financial institutions, which generally provide loans and other forms of capital to help businesses sustain themselves.
We also have some activations starting this spring. We’re getting ready to sign a contract with a third-party provider to bring in more events like Activate Oakland, but it will be specific to downtown and Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, so that’s definitely on the horizon.
