Governor Hogan launching ‘Project Restore,’ $25M project for business growth
MARYLAND – Maryland Governor Larry Hogan wants to see more business growth in the state, and on Monday he announced a plan to make that happen. The announcement comes as the Governor spent time in Berlin.
The Governor toured downtown Berlin with Mayor Zack Tyndall, speaking with local businesses and community members.
The Governor announced the launch of Project Restore, a 25 million dollar initiative to incentivize business growth and create more jobs. Governor Hogan says the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development will be giving new financial incentives to businesses and developers that occupy or restore empty storefronts.
The incentives include giving up to one year of rental subsidies, up to twenty-five-hundred a month for small business moving into vacant space and one year of sales tax rebates up to 250 thousand dollars for investors in those businesses.
“Walking through downtown Berlin you can see small businesses are doing well as part of their post-covid recovery but across the state many small towns and small mom and pop stores aren’t so lucky that’s why Governor Larry Hogan came to Berlin today to announce a 25 billion dollar program to help small business,” Tyndall said.
Mayor Tyndall believes that Berlin was lucky with their downtown, with most businesses surviving the pandemic and not a single vacant storefront.
But many businesses and towns in Maryland didn’t share in Berlin’s luck.
“As part of the devastating toll of the pandemic more of our downtown main street retail and commercial space across the state is vacant,” Governor Hogan said.
Governor Hogan believes bring new businesses in to vacated areas can help communities come back from economic hardships, and bring Maryland back stronger than it was pre-Covid.
“We have a choice we can either accept the empty storefronts as the new status quo, or we can see it as an opportunity for growth and renewal,” Hogan said adding “I don’t accept the status quo.”
Mayor Tyndall believes the program can be especially helpful in its targeting of small business, which he says can keep the money flowing through a local community rather than away from it.
” We have many business owners that also live in gown so that money stays very local , people coming to visit our small businesses I think that’s what helped us survive this pandemic,” he said.
Businesses in Berlin see the rise of new customers drawn in from new businesses as a result of Project Restore as having potential for carry-over customers that could help their businesses too.
“More businesses means more exposer to my business and the beauty of this town is the mom and pop shops and we always support new businesses in town,” said World of Toys Owner Olga Kozhevnikova.
