East Boston’s business district from Maverick to Central Square was the fifth stop on Housing and Economic Development Secretary Mike Kennealy and the Baker-Polito Administration’s statewide small business conversation tour.
The purpose of the tour is to highlight the Commonwealth’s reopening and discuss the Administration’s $2.9 billion proposal to support recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic through federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act.
The tour started at Eastie’s Cunard Tavern where Secretary Kennealy talked with owner Phil Frattaroli and ended with a roundtable discussion at El Jardin Restaurant in Central Square.
At the Cunard Tavern, Frattaroli discussed with Kennealy the biggest challenges restaurants like his face in a post-COVID economy.
Frattaroli said the biggest challenge now is hiring staff to fill the gaps left by the pandemic.
“We were lucky that we were open for the most part throughout the pandemic,” Frattaroli told Kennealy. “The challenge now is hiring because some people have left the industry. With the additional outdoor seating we were able to provide and the restrictions on capacity over we really need even more staff now than we ever did.”
Frattaroli added that the extensions to unemployment benefits have also kept some from returning to the industry.
“Luckily, everybody who wanted a job during the pandemic we were able to provide them with a job because we were still open and doing the pick up and delivery service at the start of the pandemic and gradually opened to outdoor seating,” said Frattaroli. “But again, some decided to leave and now we need more staff.”
After leaving the Cunard, Kenneally toured dozens of small businesses that make up the neighborhood’s Main Streets District from Maverick to Central Square. There Kenneally received insight into the opportunities and challenges facing small businesses and entrepreneurs. He also discussed ways the Administration can partner with businesses to jumpstart the local economic recovery.
At El Jardin Kenneally said over the summer he and the Administration will be doing, “a lot of listening and a lot of learning”.
“As we go around the state and visit our small businesses and visit our downtowns we want to kind of celebrate the work we’ve done together to get through this okay,” he said. “It’s been an incredibly challenging 16 months. We all have worked together in a very focused way to help our small businesses grow capital and they have done a tremendous job. It’s been a time of incredibly intense collaboration between the Administration and the Legislature to get things done. Together across the state we’ve literally saved thousands of small businesses so we should all feel great about that.”
Kennealy said now the conversation has sifted from recovery to ‘what’s next?”.
“We are here to hear from you, the small business owners, on what are the next things we should focus on as we continue to support our small businesses,” said Kenneally. “You have an incredible champion in Governor Baker and he was focused on us being the best, most engaged, most productive partner we can be to help our small business and help our main streets continue to grow and continue to get to the next level.”
Kenneally said small businesses are an incredibly important part of the fabric of who we are as a neighborhood, city and state.
“You serve your customers, you pay our citizens and you invest in our communities,” he told the crowd at El Jardin. “So this is really important work and we’re here to listen. I’m here to learn and try to figure out the best way to help you going forward. I’m incredibly grateful and humbled that people come out and want to spend time with us and want to share their thoughts. I know you all have a lot going on running businesses and you all have things to do but it means the world to come out and have us listen to your ideas and continue to work together.”
Kenneally called the tour of Eastie ‘terrific’.
“The best part of the job for me is getting out and getting into the communities and seeing what’s happening,” he said. “It’s how we learn and how we develop policies and how we develop ideas in these unbelievably challenging times. The good news is that we all have worked together in different ways. We’ve created partnerships that weren’t there before and so one of our big questions is how do we take those partnerships to the next level? How do we continue to be the best partner we can? So I loved hearing some of the ideas about what’s worked and what hasn’t worked. One of the things we need to focus on as we come out of this thing is growth of our small businesses.”