Met Council contributes $1 million to small business loan fund
Loan fund is latest effort to help businesses during LRT construction
Contact: Steve Dornfeld
651-602-1518
ST. PAUL -- (July 20,2010)--The Metropolitan Council’s latest effort to minimize the disruptive effects of building the Central Corridor light rail transit (LRT) line is the contribution of $1 million to an interest-free loan program to help small businesses during construction.
The creation of the loan fund was announced today at a news conference by Council Chair Peter Bell, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak. In addition to the Council’s $1 million, the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative will contribute $500,000 to the loan fund.
Council Chair Peter Bell, joined by Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak (left) and St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, outlined plans to help small businesses survive during the construction of the Central Corridor light rail line.
It is part of a corridor-wide “Ready for Rail“ initiative that will make available resources and services to assist small businesses in preparing for construction of the rail line, which will ramp up next year.
The loan program, to be administered by the city of St. Paul, is intended to help small businesses that prepare for construction but are still adversely affected by it. The idea grew out of initial discussions with the Asian Economic Development Association and input from other business groups concerned about how small businesses will fare during the construction period.
“The Council and our project partners are doing everything we can to reduce the disruptive impacts during construction,” said Bell. “Through our Ready for Rail initiative, we want to help businesses prepare to survive construction and to thrive once it is completed in 2014.”
Other steps to minimize disruption
The Met Council has worked steadily to minimize the disruptive effects of building the state’s largest public works project in a developed urban area. Other steps include:
- Limiting construction of each segment on University Avenue to two-thirds of the street at a time while maintaining a lane of traffic each way on the other third.
- Requiring contractors to restore the street in front of any business within 150 days and the sidewalk within 15 days.
- Implementing a contractor incentive program with the community to encourage responsiveness, create a partnership between contractors and the community and promote cooperation. Evaluation criteria will include conformance with notification requirements, timely response to public concerns, maintenance of vehicle access and accessible pedestrian routes and cleanliness of construction sites.
- Issuing weekly construction updates to provide the public with advance notice of routes that are closed and their alternates.
- Holding public construction meetings for businesses and the public to get updates and a look ahead from project staff and utilities.
- Setting up a construction hotline and posting the number in prominent locations throughout a work zone.
- Assigning multilingual outreach coordinators from the community to be liaisons between the project and the public from the engineering phase through construction. The Central Corridor LRT Project’s outreach efforts have been recognized nationally as a model for other communities.
- Promoting small businesses in the construction zone through directional signage and photos in the weekly construction updates, monthly newsletter and on the CCLRT project website.
Access to employment, educational, economic opportunities
The Central Corridor LRT line will provide transportation for an estimated 41,000 riders a day by 2030 to reach five major centers of economic activity – the two downtowns, the University of Minnesota, the Midway district, the state Capitol complex and neighborhoods in between. Together, these areas contain almost 280,000 jobs – a number that is expected to grow to 345,000 by 2030.
Besides the University of Minnesota, the line will improve access to Augsburg College, Concordia University-St. Paul, Hamline University, the University of St. Thomas, William Mitchell College of Law and the McNally Smith College of Music. The line will be served by an expanded network of connecting bus routes to provide access to commuters traveling from outside the corridor.
When the Central Corridor line is completed in 2014, the Twin Cities will have 115 miles of bus and rail transitways. This includes the Hiawatha LRT line from the Mall of America to downtown Minneapolis and the Northstar commuter rail line 40 miles from Big Lake, Minn., to Minneapolis.
The Metropolitan Council is the regional planning organization for the seven-county Twin Cities area. It runs the regional bus and light rail system, collects and treats wastewater, manages regional water resources, plans regional parks and administers funds that provide housing opportunities for low- and moderate-income individuals and families. The Council is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the governor.
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