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JAMESTOWN – Chautauqua County leaders are seeking additional funding from the City of Jamestown to help boost a small business revitalization grant.
Chautauqua County Chamber of Commerce CEO Daniel Heitzenrater is working with Courtney Curatolo, from the Small Business and Development Center at Jamestown Community College, to partner with the Chautauqua County Industrial Development Agency to allocate a good chunk of American Rescue Plan Act funding to help small businesses.
“We are providing small business Grants, marketing Grants, and culture Grants to area small businesses with under 50 employees throughout the entire county,” explained Curatolo.
Close to 100 businesses have signed up so far, with around 30 others on a waitlist for the next round of applications. The businesses that have signed up range from those in large industrial sectors to small coffee shops.
“Most of the requests are for website design or redesign, exterior signage, and a lot of social media ads as well as print ads,” stated Curatolo.
The pair went to Jamestown’s City Council meeting last night, making their case to work with the Department of Development to receive more funds to support more businesses outside of the American Rescue Plan Act money that they already have.
“We don’t have enough funding to fund everyone, but we’re definitely very hopeful that we’ll get more funding to finish that and obviously the more businesses that are interested on a waitlist make a case for funding,” explained Heitzenrater. “And we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to fund everyone that has that need.”
There were so many applicants in the first round, the process had to be temporarily put on hold.
“So many businesses were interested,” explained Curatolo. “Our website crashed on the first day. We did have to close the process after the first week, but we are hopeful that we are going to get more funding so more businesses could take advantage of these programs.”
There are a total of 21 businesses in Jamestown that have signed up so far, including places like the Reg Lenna Center for the Arts, Jamestown Mattress, and the BioDome Project .
For more information on how to apply, go to their website at sbdcjcc.org.
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