Seattle City Council Economic Development, Technology & City Light Committee 5/25/22

Good morning, everyone.

The May 25, 2022 meeting of the Seattle City Council's Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee will begin.

It is 9.30 in the morning.

I am Sarah Nelson, chair of the committee.

We have one item on our agenda, which is a presentation from the Office of Economic Development on their 2021 Race and Social Justice Initiative accomplishments.

And before we take roll, I want to note that Vice Chair and Council President Juarez has been excused from this meeting.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Herbold?

Council Member Sawant?

Present.

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Chair Nelson?

Present.

We will make sure that we announce when Council Member Herbold joins.

Okay.

Now would be the time for public comment, but I see no one signed up for public comment.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

All right.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

And I see no objection.

All right.

So, um, Moving right along, we are now ready to proceed to our items of business.

Today, we'll be joined by the Office of Economic Development Interim Director Mark McIntyre and his team to present their RSGI accomplishment for 2021. And I will leave it to Interim Director Markham to introduce himself and other members that will be presenting.

Thanks Councilmember Nelson really appreciate it.

Philip sit from our team is going to drive our PowerPoint so Philip if you can load that up we'll get going.

Good morning, everybody.

Happy Wednesday.

My name is Mark McIntyre.

I'm the Interim Director for the Office of Economic Development.

Thank you Council Member Nelson for inviting us to come in and share this presentation with you.

This is actually my first presentation to a committee since stepping into the role about 12 weeks ago.

So very excited to be here and thanks also Council Members Sawant and Strauss for joining us this morning.

Today we're going to present to you our race and social justice initiative accomplishments from 2021. Next slide, Philip, please.

And what we're going to do also, though, is start with kind of a who we are, what we do, give you a sense of how OED is changing with under Mayor Harrell's new administration, as well as just the changing economic conditions.

So what are we trying to do?

Who are we trying to become?

Who are we trying to serve and how are we trying to serve them?

Then we're going to talk about how racial equity and RSJI principles are critical to economic development.

A little bit about how we're putting that into action, including some of the successes and challenges and then talk about our commitments for the future.

So I'm going to start out and give you kind of a preamble and then I'm going to introduce some of our team members to talk about our accomplishments over the last year.

I'll note that while we're talking a little bit about the racial equity toolkits that we did, we're also gonna talk more broadly about our COVID-19 response and how racial equity was a key part of how we drove some of those programs.

So it's a little bit broader than what we were tasked to do, but I think you're gonna hear a good story and hopefully set us up for future conversations.

Yeah, please, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I want to, we've been joined by Council Member Herbold.

Welcome Council Member Herbold.

All right, next slide please Philip.

So, we have this huge opportunity in front of us, kind of emerging from the pandemic.

and having had our economy and certain industries and certain classes of workers really decimated.

And so as we think about what's next, it's really not a recovery back to something, it's trying to build something new.

And so we're trying to think about what's OED's identity and role in not just the Seattle economic development ecosystem, but the regional economic development ecosystem And how do we make sure that we're actually playing a particular part and kind of leveraging a lot of our partners through partnership rather than just kind of operating in a silo which has sometimes been the risk of what Seattle has done in the past.

So our mission what we'd like to see is build an inclusive economy where everyone in Seattle can fully participate.

And then our role is driving economic growth through strategies investments that open doors remove barriers to individual business and community wealth building opportunities, particularly for communities that have been excluded from such economic opportunities.

So that again starts to show you kind of the focus towards racial equity and social justice issues just just in our mission and how we're operating making sure that we're hewing towards communities that have excluded from wealth building opportunities.

Next slide please.

And this is just to kind of show that we we do a lot of work with a lot of different folks.

We have kind of a broad span of influence.

We're not just working with businesses.

We're not just working with workers.

We work with businesses, we work with industries, neighborhoods, workforce, all of those are kind of within our purview.

So it's a lot of people and a lot of different organizations that we work with.

But as we go to the next slide, I think it's more important to think about how we're working with those folks.

And that's kind of where I think the real difference is.

Next slide, Phillip.

Really what we need to be is an orchestrator.

We need to be a dot connector.

We need to be a catalyst within this regional economic development system.

We're not just going, we're probably never going to be the biggest funder sitting at any table, nor are we gonna be kind of necessarily the biggest player at any given table.

What we really need to do is think about how do we drive alignment And how do we hunt for multiplier opportunities?

When we're spending a dollar or we're making a play, we wanna make sure that we're leveraging that against other public, private or philanthropic dollars or efforts.

So we don't necessarily, again, we're not necessarily gonna be the big dollars in, but we can be the team that puts the deal together or is the first money in to catalyze a new idea or bring new voices to the table in like a unique or kind of innovative way.

And so as you see here, really what we want to be is have a set of strategies for businesses that come to us needing help.

So we're responding to them and helping navigate or connect to resources.

But we also need to have enough capacity and space set aside to initiate new things, to really be proactive and think around the corner and kind of hunt for those opportunities and put together those deals and projects that might not otherwise happen in a reactive mode.

So we've got to have both the proactive and reactive strategies built out.

And I'll just give a quick example there.

Hopefully you saw recently the work that our team did in cooperation with the state, the port, Council Member Morales, many others to help save the Seattle Maritime Academy, which is a hugely important workforce training tool for our maritime industry.

Again, we weren't necessarily the big money in, but we could connect the dots and kind of pull the pieces together to make sure that that got off the ground and stayed as a key piece of our maritime industry.

Next slide, please.

So a lot of this leads, though, to how racial equity is going to be core to this work.

This quote that I've got here is something that Dr. Raphael Bostic, who's the chair of the Atlanta Fed, said in the wake of George Floyd's murder, which today is the unfortunate anniversary of.

And he said, systemic racism is a yoke that drags on the American economy and that this country has a both moral and economic imperative to end these unjust and destructive practices.

And in 2020 that just rang so true to me the fact that we have this both moral and economic imperative and so as we think about economic development.

We want that to be one of our North stars this moral and economic imperative and driving our work and that if we're doing it right we're actually creating more opportunity and more wealth creation.

throughout for our local and regional economy than if we're just going back, recovering back to something that was.

And so again, trying to really think about what an inclusive economy is and bringing together individual wealth, business wealth, and community wealth in a unified way is gonna be really, really important.

So this is part of our North Star as we think about where we're going next with OED and the projects that we're gonna put together, the partnerships that we're gonna build, and hopefully the wins that we get for the city and the region.

Next slide, please.

So as we're thinking about doing that, there's obviously challenges and opportunities.

And I'm not going to read the list here, but just picking a couple, certainly we're limited in what we can do as economic developers.

There are other states, other cities, other regions that have much more direct tools for economic development.

We have some limits here in our state.

So we've got to be very creative about how we navigate around those.

We've also got, and I'll just be frank about this, we've had five directors in five years over at OED.

We've had a huge amount of staff turnover.

We're still trying to fill vacancies as quickly as possible.

So we've got some internal capacity issues, which we really need to address so that we can get, again, out of that reactive cycle and into that more proactive thinking about how to build toward a future.

We've also got some issues with how we are communicating what we do.

This language access issue is really important for us to get right, because we can build the best programs in the world, but if they're not reaching the populations that we really want to try to work with, then we're doing it wrong.

And so that's a huge challenge as we kind of look ahead and think about building towards the future.

But then as I mentioned, some of the opportunities are there's, there is a lack of regional alignment and so we can be a leader in that regional in that regional construct, we can really generate some good ideas and some good projects that leverage federal dollars that work with the state work with kind of our other public private and philanthropic partners.

To build some really unique and interesting models, and I'll just note that one of the interesting ones that we built when I was back at the chamber was the housing connector group which is now spun off into its own own self sustaining nonprofit and doing some really good work getting people housed.

And that still exists as a public private partnership and I just think that that model is is so keen and there's so many things we can do for economic development there.

The final opportunity that I'll highlight is storytelling, we have such incredible businesses and workers here in this in this city, and he wants to be that chief storyteller to kind of lift up those stories and make sure that we're both highlighting the challenges they're experiencing but also celebrating those successes.

And so one that I'll mention is we recently launched our Seattle restored program which is helping match make between BIPOC business owners and vacant spaces downtown.

And the task we're a projects business that's down close to the stadiums in the Pioneer Square area, going down there and visiting with the business owner and kind of learning about what she's doing and how excited she is to have this space.

and her ability to import some goods from Africa and support some entrepreneurs back there while also supporting herself as an entrepreneur is just such a great story.

And so figuring out how do we tell more of those and really kind of lift those up that can help inspire kind of future generations is something that's keen on our mind as well.

Next slide, please, Philip.

Here we're talking again.

So as we're trying to retool and reorganize ourselves, we're also trying to rebuild our team culture.

We have a skeleton crew right now, as I mentioned, that's been through a lot.

So there's definitely some just sensitivity around making sure that people feel included, people feel like there's transparency, people feel like they belong.

as part of this group.

And so we've got some real work to do, especially as we talk about race, racial issues on our team.

For instance, we have both of our change team leads are out on extended leaves right now.

And so one of the near term opportunities for us is to rebuild our change team really try to invite some of our new staff in and make sure that people feel included and like they belong and that we're being clear and direct about these issues and not trying to shy away from them.

So this is going to be a huge team culture building moment for us.

Over the rest of the years, we kind of add some new team members in and make sure that we're talking about race and social justice issues isn't a sideline thing but it's core to our identity and the team that we're trying to build.

Next slide please.

which really leads us to looking backward at some of our racial equity work last year.

So we're gonna start off talking about some of our racial equity toolkit highlights, so our RETs.

And I'm very pleased to introduce Scott Puskalak from our team, who's gonna talk about the Shop to the Beat program, its origin, the impact that it's had and kind of where it's going next.

So Scott, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you very much, Director McIntyre, and good morning, Chair Nelson and committee members.

Thank you for this opportunity to present to you today.

My name is Scott Pluskalec, and I am the nightlight business advocate for the city, and I am also the program manager for the Shop to the Beat program.

And I will be presenting today on the racial equity toolkit that informed and continues to be in progress on the Shop to the Beat program.

Next slide, Philip, thank you.

So wanted to give a little background on this.

The impetus for this was a webinar that I and my colleague, Mellie Darby attended back in August of 2020 on racism and the nighttime economy sponsored by a group called 24 Hour Dallas.

And some of the topics that were discussed in there included exclusionary practices such as dress codes or guest lists that were designed to keep people of color out of certain establishments and venues, income disparity between musicians and artists, BIPOC artists and white artists, and then cultural exploitation by white-owned venues.

which included sort of using BIPOC musicians and artists in a certain way to promote their venues.

So this raised the obvious question to us, if this is happening in Dallas, this clearly must be happening as well in Seattle.

And what does that look like?

And for a little background information on the context that this was happening in, the COVID closures that had happened with all the venues, so shutting down the entire industry, had basically started spurring conversations on what is building back the music ecosystem more equitably look like?

How do we do it?

There was a recognition that the industry was not equitable prior to the closures.

So taking this time, how do we take this time to actually look at that and work towards a more equitable industry?

And this included both locally and nationally, the Washington Nightlife and Music Association and the National Independent Venue Association started generating these conversations as well.

So it was clear to us that we really needed to gather information and start talking and engaging with stakeholders and figuring out how to use the information that we received to inform city policymaking and how we design programs.

So next slide.

So we decided to start having these conversations.

We wanted to start small.

I'm sorry, I see Chair Nelson, you have a question?

I'm sorry, you're on mute.

I had a specific question about this industry sector.

So before we proceed past this, I'll let you finish and then I'll ask that question.

Thanks.

Okay, thank you.

So we, again, we started, decided to start fairly small.

We reached out to BIPOC industry professionals in Seattle to have one-on-one conversations with them to sort of lay the groundwork, get a sense on a very personal level of what their experiences were.

And these folks ranged from, there was a spectrum of professionals, including promoters, producers, artists, musicians themselves, managers, and technicians.

And we asked them some of these questions, not limited to these questions, but this was sort of the basis of our conversation.

around accessibility, what it was like for them working in the industry, any microaggressions or overt instances of racism and exclusion that they had experienced, and income disparities for them or the ability to monetize their work.

We asked how the Seattle industry compared to other cities.

Um, and then we started looking at, okay, this is a, we knew we wanted to have larger conversations beyond these.

So, who else should be at the table?

What does the change look like?

And how can, or should even the city lead or support work?

Like, are we the people to be able to really lead this next slide?

While we heard many of the similar things that we heard during the Dallas webinar, we also heard some things that were very specific to Seattle itself and the industry here.

One of the top things was the significant changes that Seattle's nightlife and entertainment landscape had been going under which preceded COVID.

So this wasn't just because of the loss of venues due to the pandemic, but there already had been a systemic loss of venue closures, loss of community spaces, and loss of cultural programming.

We heard a lot about how there used to be just culturally in Seattle Things like day parties or house parties that were a chance that were community led, community built, and they were able to bring folks together to spontaneously do performances and share experiences.

And those had diminished and had disappeared.

And a lot of that had to do with gentrification, with loss of space.

with people being priced out of the city and artists moving to other towns, lack of opportunities, which was driving folks to other cities to pursue their careers.

We also learned that here, Nightlife and entertainment relationships are really very relationship and reference based.

So it's about who you know.

And if you don't have the ability to get in on the ground floor, if you don't have the ability to network, if you don't have access to networking systems, then you're kept out.

And then another highlight of it was due to that, there was a big opportunity and need for further education and industry awareness and peer mentorships to help build up that networking muscle.

Next slide, please.

So we had a plan that we were going to obviously have larger conversations on this.

But that raised some questions for us.

Again, is the city the right convener for this?

Should we be the lead on this or should we just be a support system that helps facilitate a conversation that comes organically from the community?

Who should be at the table again?

How do we reach them?

How do we bring them in?

Another barrier to moving forward is also we felt very, very strongly that we needed to compensate people for their time and participating in these conversations.

And that if we were to be the lead convener, that we would need to get a facilitator from the community to lead that.

And we wanted to be able to pay them.

So there was a budget constraint that we would need to identify where that money would come from and how we would identify that.

And then finally, of course, because of COVID, how would we convene large groups of people during the pandemic in a way that was meaningful and allowed for meaningful conversation?

So while we were noodling on this and we were trying to sort of come to an agreement about how this was all going to happen, the ARPA funds started happening and we were being asked to submit ideas for how to use those funds and how to get them out into the community.

And our former colleague, Pedro Gomez, had this idea that eventually became the Shop to the Beat program.

which was we have these two sectors retail businesses and musicians who have been extremely hard hit by the pandemic, how do we match them together and support both at the same time.

When that came up and we started exploring that, we realized that this was a really great opportunity to utilize some of those conversations that we had originally had and some of the information that we had heard, and how do we use that to inform and create this program to be as equitable as possible and to really address some of those issues.

So giving you a little overview on Shop to the Beat itself, what is it?

It is a program where we pair musicians to perform live music in non-traditional venues, such as retail stores, gyms, coffee shops, jewelry shops, furniture stores.

So places where you wouldn't be expecting a musician to be playing, you walk in and there's somebody there.

In the background, and the idea here was, how do we address some of these issues that we heard so addressing lack of venues by creating new venues, addressing a lack of access to the venues that we had heard by removing that middleman and create it being the producers ourselves, placing them in the venues.

providing an opportunity to connect in community that was lost by those loss of house parties and day parties that we had heard about by placing musicians really directly into the community.

And addressing issues of just the ability to perform and the ability to make money.

So what we did was we partnered with an organization called gigs for you.

They run the music at the airport program that I think you may all be familiar with.

And they already are in a position to place musicians.

So we, the city, were paying the musicians to provide free performances for the venues with the hope that that would drive foot traffic and drive retail sales for those businesses where they perform.

So those are the overall goals that we were looking to set here.

We broke it into two programs because we wanted to be able to sort of do proof of concept.

So we did a pilot program in the holiday season, during the holiday shopping season.

We had 27 participating businesses, including such businesses as Queen Care in the Central District, Hula Waiola on Rainier Avenue, Black Coffee Northwest in Ballard.

And we had a pretty good geographic range across the city in terms of where our businesses were.

And of the 27 businesses, we did have 10 located in what OED identifies as high priority neighborhoods.

Now we had set a target of really promoting and targeting BIPOC businesses and I think in looking at the pilot program, we realized we didn't quite hit that goal and that we need to, that's an area that we need to improve on.

We are coming back this summer with a larger program that will continue this, and we have used this opportunity in between to do surveys of both the musicians and the businesses to understand what worked, what didn't work, and what we need to improve, and that is one of the things that we really need to improve.

We did set a priority of targeting a majority of BIPOC artists to be participants, and we did have over 60% who identified as BIPOC participating in the program.

We certainly look forward to continuing this.

As I said, this RET is in progress because we continue to look at the program and tweak it.

And we look forward to coming back in the summer, partnering with other, there's a great opportunity here we missed of partnering with other departments in the city, like the Office of Arts and Culture or the Department of Neighborhoods.

I think that will help us improve our outreach.

and our ability to bring musicians into this and bring in a greater array of small businesses.

So next slide.

Just wanted to leave you here with a couple of quotes from some of our participants.

Michaud was a participating artist and really spoke to the community focus of it and his ability to connect in there.

And then Wendy, who is a owner of the jewelry store in West Seattle, who was just super enthusiastic about the program, but not only for herself, but really in the ability to promote artists and the fact that she could never have afforded to have something like this in her business herself.

And so she really appreciated having it.

So thank you very much for the opportunity to present on this RET.

Thank you, Scott, really appreciate your presentation, Scott also hosted a meet and greet with the Music Commission just last night.

And I mean we heard a lot of the same thing, same themes from the folks that showed up that how deeply impacted they've been through coven especially with venues shutting down and still being slow to reopen.

And so a program like this, where we can really, again, break down barriers and open doors for musicians, create that vibrancy and try to have the win-win of getting those musicians paid and getting them gigs, but also hopefully increasing retail sales is just really smart and a good example of kind of that dot connecting and orchestrating that we want to do to generate economic activity across the city.

So thanks a lot, Scott.

Next slide, please.

So we're gonna transition here and talk a little bit about our COVID-19 response, because this obviously was a large bulk of the work that we did at OED.

And there was a specific focus on racial equity for a lot of the work that we did.

You can see some of the things, some of the actual activities that we did.

And then I'm gonna turn it over to Heidi Hall, who's gonna talk about, from our Only in Seattle team, who's gonna talk about a really innovative way that we were getting money out on the ground to support our neighborhoods.

So Heidi, I'll turn it over to you.

All right, thank you, Director McIntyre and members of the committee.

So again, my name is Heidi Hall.

I work with the Neighborhood Business Districts team at OED, also known as Only in Seattle.

So as we, I think, as we all know, the pandemic has been just extremely disruptive with disproportionate impacts experienced in our Black and Indigenous and people of color communities as well as small businesses.

It's well-documented nationally and was true in Seattle as well.

So we've been working really closely with our partners to understand what they're experiencing in their neighborhoods and to meet district partners and small businesses where they are.

So this included helping get access to PPE, being a conduit for timely information, helping them navigate federal and state relief resources and getting those to businesses in need.

So we've had deep engagement with our partners throughout the pandemic and the needs that they were seeing in their districts and hearing from their small businesses really informed the Neighborhood Economic Recovery Fund that I want to share with you guys today.

So that fund was really designed to support community-led strategies for economic recovery and was designed in a way to intentionally focus on racial equity.

So we invested nearly $6 million of federal relief funding to support neighborhood economic recovery, as outlined in the Seattle Rescue Plan.

So investments were allocated through direct grants to neighborhood business district organizations, as well as a public request for proposals to fund community driven ideas for economic recovery.

So I'm going to focus a little bit on the RFP.

So OED received 119 proposals from the RFP requesting more than $9 million in funding.

And so the grant guidelines and scoring criteria prioritized communities most impacted by the pandemic, as I had highlighted earlier.

We worked with our colleagues to work on an interdepartmental data analysis that identified highly impacted census tracts to inform our equity criteria.

So this overlaid things like COVID case rates and job losses with the city's race and equity index and displacement risk index as one way to identify those areas most impacted.

We partnered, we leveraged those partnerships, a lot of the language access work that we had done for pandemic response, communications to target outreach to communities most impacted.

And then we also instituted a multi-tier review process that included a community review panel to bring in that broader perspective as we were evaluating the proposals.

So 25 organizations were funded through the RFP, which represents $1.35 million.

And just as a quick highlight on some of the outcomes of that process, 85% of the funding was invested in our equity districts, which we use To define our high displacement risk neighborhoods those that have been historically redlined or or that have experienced institutional racism and historic disinvestment.

So 52% of our grantees are black or indigenous lead grantee organizations 28% of organizations are led by persons from other communities of color.

The other investment strategy are direct grants to neighborhood business district organizations where another 28 grants and those also prioritize communities most impacted by the pandemic.

With higher direct grants awarded to our equity districts and our other districts prioritizing outreach and support for BIPOC businesses in their districts.

So about 60% of the direct grant funds were awarded to equity districts, which was another 11 grants.

So community grantees are implementing a variety of activities and projects that directly help small businesses, communities, and local economies recover from the impacts of the pandemic.

Many of the proposed projects actually focus on activations and bringing foot traffic and customers into the districts to support neighborhood businesses, as well as public realm improvements, culturally relevant business outreach and supports.

And just as a couple of examples, again, we can't go through all of them now, but just a couple examples I wanted to share, you know, in Lake City, for example, they launched a business incubator in arts and cultural space that includes a year-round pop-up market for BIPOC vendors and farmers.

They're expanding the 31st Avenue Market Street for eight weeks during the summer, providing outdoor seating and increased revenue for adjacent businesses.

We did find a lot of our smaller BIPOC immigrant-owned businesses were not able to take advantage of some of those free street use permits.

So this is one example where our neighborhood business districts are taking the lead to really organize some of these shared outdoor seating areas so that businesses can see some of the benefits from that.

And then they'll do some promotion as well.

And they also have an eight-week training program in partnership with a refugee artisan initiative that was supported as well.

So that's one example.

We also have multiple activations and vendor markets being supported, including Black Arts Love Retail Project, which is focused on showcasing and promoting the work of Black artists and BIPOC business owners anchored in the Central District, but they're also pulling from Southeast Seattle as well.

There's going to be multiple activations in Chinatown International District celebrating the, you know, the culture and history of the district, as well as supporting public realm improvements and partnering to bring customers into the district and support local businesses.

So the way that those activations are being structured and supported and promoted, really thinking about bringing in, bringing people back into the neighborhood, supporting the local businesses and helping them be more sustainable.

And just kind of in closing for 2022 we're going to continue to partner with our districts and grantees to support neighborhood businesses.

There's a number of opportunities to leverage the equitable community initiative investments, including things like technical assistance, which is going to be rolling out now, including things like commercial space assistance, financial health.

Also an expansion of Seattle Restored that Director McIntyre mentioned earlier citywide.

And so we're actually going through a RET on that right now.

So look forward to presenting on that next year.

And yeah, a lot of good things.

And hopefully we can come back at some point and with our community partners to talk more about some of those projects and activities.

So I will hand it back to Director McIntyre.

Thank you.

Thanks Heidi really appreciate you walking us through that, as we think about like getting smarter about economic development.

Certainly we want to look outside of ourselves at other cities, maybe even internationally and try and steal the best ideas possible.

We also need to have a balance of of lifting up the ideas and the thinking that are already in our communities and I think this this RFP is such a good example of that.

And so we need more of this type of activity because really from the city perspective, as we think about helping businesses and helping communities build wealth, it starts with listening and building trust.

And so this type of RFP where we're actually investing in community-based ideas, helping build the community, helping activate and like generate that vibrancy, we need more of that.

So also don't be surprised if you see in our budget proposal more funding for this type of activity, because it's just really crucial to reactivating our neighborhoods.

And again, turning the corner from kind of emergency relief to future prosperity for our neighborhoods.

So thanks again Heidi.

Next slide please Philip.

So now we're going to turn to another really cool program.

This one really is a perfect example of kind of dot connecting and generating a win-win.

It's our youth web design program.

You might have heard a little bit about it previously.

We just reopened the next round For this program, it's helping youth get new technical skills for web design and helping generate websites for, particularly for BIPOC business owners.

But I'll let Anissa Khodobashian from our Key Industries and Workforce Development team talk to you a little bit about it.

But I'm really excited about this because, again, it's a good example of trying to create win-wins and do that dot connecting over at OED.

So Anissa, take it away.

Thank you.

As Director McIntyre mentioned, I'm Anisa Kashbaktian.

I'm the Technology and Creative Workforce Advocate on the Key Industries and Workforce Development Team at OED.

I'm just going to start off by saying it's really no secret that this region has been really greatly influenced by the global tech industry.

So this is why it's been of utmost importance for us to invest in technology programs and efforts that are truly rooted in the local community.

such as the Youth Web Design Program.

And this program not only teaches young people technical skills that will significantly support their career growth, but it also allows them to earn money and learn at an early age that their work is really greatly valued and truly makes a difference.

So in late 2020, the Youth Web Design Program was piloted in partnership with the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle as a reaction to two specific needs that we saw were greatly exacerbated by the pandemic.

One, youth empowerment and youth employment and internship opportunities that support sustainable career development were greatly impacted due to the stay at home order.

And then second is the need for small businesses to have a web presence, especially minority owned businesses, namely BIPOC and immigrant owned.

And we know that the most marginalized BIPOC individuals and communities, both in the realm of workforce and small businesses, experience inequities and the most lack of opportunities.

So what this program is at a high level is high school students.

So far, we've been working with Garfield High School students.

Most, if not all, identify as Black, African, and or African-American, are taught website design.

And as a final project, they create have been creating a professional website for a local small business, and the young people receive a stipend for their work.

And I want to note that we also cover the expenses for the website and the domain for a year.

And this year, we're now expanding this program to professional creatives as well to support our creative industry's goals and help local creatives gain employment and or gig work.

And this really connects to the creatives that Scott got to work with through Shop the Beat.

So the goals for the youth workforce goals are to equip young people with industry standard skills, namely coding, HTML, CSS, and Java.

They're able to earn technical certification and they also are provided paid learning opportunity and portfolio development.

And they receive skills that help them establish themselves a career, a potential career in tech, or in a creative field or entrepreneurship.

And it just allows them to be empowered in their next step in their career trajectory.

And as I mentioned before, it also gives them leadership skills and confidence in knowing that they can create something professional at a really young age.

And as I mentioned also earlier, majority of the participating students do identify as Black, African, and or African American.

And it's been really important for us to empower them to be competitive in career fields that BIPOC communities are really highly underrepresented in.

For the small business goals, it really is to get small businesses online who have little to no web presence.

We've been prioritizing outreach to BIPOC small businesses, particularly those in equity districts.

And the goal is to support businesses with the highest digital access barriers.

And for the creative professionals, which I mentioned, it's a new addition to this program starting this upcoming cohort.

We really want to ensure that we're supporting local creatives who have no websites or have limited web presence and we want to help them procure work.

And some lessons learned, some challenges and lessons learned in the last two years of this program has been, one of the biggest ones has been outreach and case management to the small businesses.

And to address that, we recently hired a canvasser who's been visiting BIPOC businesses Prioritizing equity districts and going door to door to spread the word about this program and also supporting those business owners who have signed up and require more one on one support to be on boarded, and we're continuing to look at ways to meet these businesses, where they are at.

And lastly, it's important to share that the youth web design program has received Clifford investment, which is allowing us to scale this as well as possibly add additional elements to the program.

Such as covering the website and domain costs for maybe two to three years adding possibly adding a social media and marketing element to it.

We're also looking at expanding this to other high schools.

such as Rainier Beach High School.

We are working with the Seattle Public Schools right now to see how we can have the young people earn CTE elective credits.

And what you can expect this year, which Director McIntyre mentioned, is we have a cohort coming up in the summer and we have one in the fall.

And I think that's it.

So I really thank you for this opportunity to share about the Youth Web Design Program.

I'm gonna hand this back to Director McIntyre.

Thanks, Anissa.

Again, just a shiny example of a win for youth workforce development, a win for small business digital access and a win for building trust and partnership with the Urban League.

So again, dot connecting at its finest and really trying to figure out how we scale these things to create more opportunities in all of those buckets.

Next slide, please, Philip.

So wrapping us up, our final presenter is the man who's been driving this presentation, Philip Sitt, who's going to talk to us a little bit about some of the activation work that we did in 2021. So Philip, take it away.

Thank you, Director McIntyre, and good morning, committee chair and committee members.

My slide is really just a quick reflection of some of the different partnerships that we did in 2021 as we were reopening the city.

Starting off with the Welcome Back Weeks in collaboration with Office of Arts and Culture, Department of Neighborhoods, Parks, and others, around May and June, we started thinking about, you know, as we reached the milestone of being one of the first major cities to obtain 70% vaccination rates, and knowing that downtown was hit with a kind of double whammy of workforce not being present and how do we kind of elevate people to come back to downtown and support those small businesses.

So working with our community partners as listed here, we did a series of activations across the downtown core.

OED's role was really to kind of elevate South downtown.

Because of the anti-Asian bias that was occurring around the region and the country, we want to really focus as our community partners were focusing on the downtown core and center city, OED was tasked to kind of how do we support Pioneer Square all the way to Little Saigon.

So we partner with Intentionalist, which is an organization that highlights and spotlights our BIPOC small businesses around the city.

And as the activation was taking place, we ran promotions to highlight businesses that I would say kind of like the hidden gems of our city.

Businesses that were working around the clock during the epidemic and also didn't have necessarily kind of like a visible presence on digital media, similar to what Anissa was saying in terms of her program with the Urban League.

I'm happy to announce that in terms of our full report on the downtown recovery activations, we had about 500 businesses that were supported directly or indirectly through campaign dollars and marketing dollars.

80% of those businesses were identified as women or minority-owned.

We also were able to employ about 200 creatives during those activations in June, July, and also the fall.

And 90% of those creative types, kind of dovetailing back to Scott's presentation on that particular industry, 90% of the creatives that were hired were also self-identified as BIPOC.

So great set of events that occurred in 2021. And as Heidi was mentioning, kind of our neighborhood investments, a lot of the best practices that started from the Welcome Back Weeks events in 2021 were able to be leveraged for our community partners in South Seattle and North Seattle and West Seattle in terms of as they were provided with neighborhood grants, how do they bring those kind of like activations in their urban business corridors?

Secondarily, following how we actually were able to do kind of like an outdoor gathering of that size was because, as I mentioned, we were I think one of the first cities to hit 70% vaccination rate in collaboration with Seattle Fire Department, King County Public Health in the state.

But we also recognize that there was still a lot of folks, you know, working two jobs that maybe not have direct access to schedule an appointment for the vaccines that was available in our region.

So we were tasked by the mayor's office and the fire department to set up kind of 15 different vaccination pop-ups in neighborhoods and events where we can reach community members where they were.

We had great collaborations and partnerships with small businesses.

Out in West Seattle, we did a ice cream giveaway with Husky Deli.

We had over 125 people get their vaccinations in April and May during that time frame.

In the U district, we partner with, you can see kind of the image of that kind of discount, and we were able to provide ice cream for the first 50 people in the U district, supporting also a BIPOC-owned ice cream shop called Sweet Alchemy.

Um, those, uh, in all in all those are great events.

We were able to again, reach community members where they were.

Um, you know, may it be a farmer's market, a community event, or just showing up, uh, in Soto where the industrial employees were, uh, still working around the clock during phase one and phase two.

Pivoting a little bit in terms of the Clean City Initiative, this was a multi-department initiative to kind of spruce up the city as we were reopening in Phase 3 and Phase 4. OED received a portion of that funding in collaboration with Seattle Public Utilities and also Parks and SDOT.

Looking from an equity lens, our BIAs had a lot of capacity.

and they were doing a lot of great work during the pandemic.

And most of them have some type of vendor service to do pressure washing, graffiti removal, and street cleaning.

So we made a decision, a strategic one, to allocate some of the funding to the non-BIA equity districts just so that they could get some of that beautification on their public realm.

So we partner with a non-profit called Uplift Northwest.

Some of you guys might be familiar with that organization.

They formerly were called the Millionaires Club.

They employed folks that are returning back to the workforce.

So we were pleased to provide half of the funding we received, we allocated to Uplift Northwest so that they could provide cleaning services for this kind of reopening period of three to four months across 18 different neighborhoods that were outside of the BIA ecosystem.

All in all, I think about 50 individuals were paid a market rage in terms of this program in order to do some of the public realms work.

So kind of this is like a holistic recap that kind of, I think intersects a little bit of, you know, the neighborhood investments that Heidi mentioned, the creative industry, which, you know, definitely took a hit during the pandemic and Scott's presentation.

And Anissa, in terms of digital access, I think we saw a lot of small businesses were able to rapidly pivot because they had that kind of capacity.

But we also saw a lot of small businesses where they were really facing a lot of struggles without a digital presence or were not situated in like an urban village like Columbia City, where there was still a lot of employees, high wage earners that were working from home.

We have some fascinating data from 2021 where some neighborhoods actually saw foot traffic increase from 2019 as we were reopening the city, including Ballard in Council Member Straus' office district as well.

So in closing, I'm going to turn it back over to Director McIntyre, but that kind of gives you a little bit, hopefully a little bit more layering of the recovery work that our office was doing in 2021.

Thanks very much, Philip.

Next slide, I think we're reaching the end and then we'll be happy to take take some questions here but just just to wrap it up.

As I said at the top, you know, we're trying to rethink OEDs identity and role.

We really want to be seen as an orchestrator and a dot connector and make sure that we're trying to Trying to find ways to break down barriers and open doors to wealth building opportunities for communities that have, particularly for communities that have been excluded from such opportunities, and that we're defining an inclusive economies where everyone can fully participate, and that we're generating individual business and community wealth kind of holistically.

Hopefully you've seen kind of a clear thread through some of our work last year.

centering racial equity, doing a lot of outreach to different communities, and really trying to focus on where there was the deepest impact from COVID, the different industries, the different geographies, the different demographics.

And so going forward, we're going to make sure that we center racial equity in our work as we think about economic revitalization and workforce development.

It's going to be a core part of our planning, not an add-on, but kind of a key part of it.

I mentioned earlier that we've got to, we've got to figure out how we communicate what we do a little bit better both the storytelling but also where those opportunities are and what those programs might be.

And then finally, as, as I said, we were still a little bit of a skeleton crew over here and so this team did really great work last year.

and they're doing great work now, but as we look at the future and we look at kind of what we want to do, we're going to need to invest in our people.

We've got to invest in our infrastructure and our technology, and we've got to invest in our team culture and make sure that we've got a really positive, forward-thinking group of people working on these issues.

So those are a couple of things, or that's kind of wrapping up what we did last year and a look ahead into the future.

We're going to be excited to come back to this committee later on this summer and give kind of a fuller explanation of our work plan, our priorities and kind of what we're trying to set up now and going forward.

But hopefully that gives you a glimpse of some of the great work that this team has done.

I wanna thank Philip, Heidi, Anissa and Scott for helping present for their great work.

There's a lot of others on the team that put in some great effort as well.

With that, we'll wrap it up and see if you guys have any questions or comments.

Thanks very much.

Thank you so much.

team for outlining this.

And I do look forward to future presentations.

I just want to say that when you talk about the identity of OED, to me, I've always believed that key to race and social justice is providing more opportunities for wealth generation.

And that can be homeownership or access to capital for business owners in BIPOC communities, and any number of things.

But basically, OEDs, to me, your identity is helping people to start and grow businesses in Seattle and that in itself is facilitating wealth generation.

And so it seems as though that is what we're talking about today is basically in the core DNA of your department uniquely in the city.

So thank you very much for this presentation, for the work that you've done in the past, everybody there who's been with OED for a while and going forward.

So in my inauguration speech, I laid out the top two priorities for my committee, and they were revitalizing downtown and neighborhood small business districts and preventing the displacement of minority-owned businesses in communities that are undergoing rapid gentrification.

And to that end, I've met with leaders of equitable community-developed organizations, those that are partners in the Crescent Collaborative, I've met with CDFI directors and also Mike Fong, who is the regional director of the Small Business Administration to figure out how do we get more capital into the hands of people that have been excluded because of the fact that they don't have the equity or the property that traditional banks require for commercial loans.

I'm interested in land use and building code changes that will make it easier for businesses that could be displaced from neighborhoods that are undergoing change?

Like, for example, when a big development comes in, perhaps it's an affordable housing project that comes in and deplaces four or five storefronts or whatever.

How can we make it easier for those businesses that would be displaced to move back into those spaces, start small, know, be able to to grow as their business grows, land use code changes, maybe even a program that's modeled on the multifamily tax exemption program that would incentivize building owners to cover the cost for tenant improvements so that we can keep those businesses here and those jobs here.

So it's the core priority of mine, and your department has the know-how and the historic knowledge on what needs to be done.

So I look forward to working really closely with you going forward.

And when I raised my hand earlier when we were talking about nightlife, I just wanted to, getting back to dot connecting, which is a key function of both OED and city council, I believe.

In, I think it was March, maybe it was February, my office met Scott at El Corazon, and we were talking with Dana, the owner, about how important nightlife is, not just because it supports our artists, but also as job creators, because there are so many people that enter into their professions working at music venues.

uh, doing the lighting and sound engineering and all of that.

And they were talking about ways, I don't know, they, they put forward, um, that it would be really helpful if, if the city could figure out how to, uh, strengthen that pipeline of, um, you know, between, uh, people that, uh, that are looking for well-paid jobs in our creative industries and, and the, uh, the owners of venues and whatever ways that we as a city could serve as a conduit for those opportunities.

So hoping that we could talk more about that.

And also, yeah, Scott and Phillip and I and Council Member Lewis were all at the Music Commission's event last night.

Thank you very much for convening that.

And they are starting their, let's see, City of Music Revision, which is their strategic plan.

And they had one from 2010 to 2020, then the pandemic hit, and so they are They're restarting that visioning process.

And so I expect that OED will be involved and I would love to help facilitating their priorities too.

And then finally, one last thing, and then I'll open it up for questions.

When you were talking about the work that you're doing with youth and digital equity, I never knew about that program.

And I'm really glad to know because I was thinking You know, what small businesses really need in this town that don't have it already is a website, because we've seen how important that is.

So I'm really glad to hear about that work.

And when it comes to, you know, helping our young creatives figure out how to make a paycheck from their art, I want to lift up the work of Unified Outreach, which does just that.

They work with youth in high schools and in summer programs that basically help people think about young people and crime.

And this is, they frame their work partly as gun violence prevention.

They help young people think about how they can actually break into the industry.

So if they're interested in video, well, what do they need to do?

What are the steps they need to take to get into actually professionalizing their art?

But in any case, I will stop talking now and open it up for questions or comments from my committee members.

Chair, I'll take this opportunity just to say thank you to the entire OED team.

The work that you do is incredible.

It is the underpinning of so many people's success.

And I think you intervene in failure more often than people realize to be that safety net for businesses.

And I really can't thank you enough for all the work that you've done through the pandemic.

You were crucial in making sure that the Ballard Farmers Market was the first farmers market to reopen when the pandemic shut it down, even though people were still getting their groceries from the farmer's market.

And that's just one of countless, countless, countless numbers of ways that you've helped me, my community and our entire city.

So with that, and I mean, we're not even talking about, I haven't even started talking about nightlife or the saving of Bumbershoot or all that is to come as we rebuild a better Seattle.

because we don't need to return to the way we were.

We get to return to a place that we've been better than ever before.

And I'm trusting in your leadership because I see you as trusted partners.

Keep it up, go forth, and let's make the Seattle the Seattle we know it can be.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

And thank you Council Member Krauss for those rousing words.

Good to hear some optimism around turning the corner here.

I wanna just also thank OED, not just for all the work that you do generally that is so important in ensuring that we have a thriving economy and thriving business districts, but I also wanna thank you really for the emphasis that you have shared with us in this presentation today on the creative sector.

We know that before the pandemic, the creative sector really drew, drove a significant portion of Seattle's economy.

And we also know that the creative sector was among the very hardest hit by COVID and is predicted not just specifically here in Seattle, but generally the creative sector is anticipated to recover the slowest.

So really, again, appreciate that.

that focus, love that you shared with us that the West Seattle Junction was among the locations that benefited from Shop to the Beat.

That's super exciting.

I just have some questions about the data collection that you referenced on slide 12. You write that the data let's see, identifies specifically a need for further education, industry awareness, and peer mentorships.

The data shows experiences of artists interacting with venues and gatekeepers and artists' misconception of industry sectors, business practices, and standards.

So wondering whether or not there's some follow-up that you're going to be working on to address some of those issues that were identified through that data collection.

Thank you.

Thank you for the question.

And yes, the greater conversation around the systemic issues underlying nightlife needs to continue and that is an area that we continue want to explore so that conversation does not end with shop to the beat by any means this was just sort of being able to quickly take the information that we had received and pivot to a program and making sure that that program was developed according to what we had heard.

But the greater conversation needs to continue to happen.

And now that we are opening back up again, we need to pick that thread back up and continue to follow it.

So thank you for that question.

Yeah, one thing I've heard from people in the South end is that there are very few actual venues for entertainment.

I think it was Julius, no, Cesar Robinson mentioned that to me, but just having physical space is one key to access and breaking down gatekeeping barriers.

Are there any other questions here?

Well, that was a teaser of future presentations that will be coming in the committees ahead and I'm especially looking forward to hearing how OED continues to hone its identity and present your work plan, talk about industry sectors, and especially continue our conversation about how we can strengthen our film economy in Seattle.

But thank you very much.

And if you ever want anything from this committee to mention or to help promote that you're doing over the summer, I'm happy to be a mouthpiece for the good work that you're doing.

So thank you so much for coming today and going through this report and your accomplishments and work that you're going to be continuing to do.

Thank you.

Thanks very much for having us.

And thanks for the inspiring words.

We will go forth and continue to do work and be back with more information and more discussion.

And I just want to say again, I am so glad that you are at the helm of OED.

And it's just great to see your leadership going forward.

So thank you.

I appreciate that very much.

Thanks.

So one thing I wanted to note and also thank Council Member Herbold for allowing that presentation in your committee yesterday.

It was sort of a follow-up to the discussion that we had on February 9th with the BIA directors and small business owners who talked about You know, the impacts of crime on their businesses and their staff and their customers.

So that was a very, I really do appreciate providing that that venue to talk about next steps, how those recommendations are.

are going and conversations with the mayor's office about new initiatives.

And I especially was interested in the, I believe it was either Aaron Goodman or Don Blakeney presenting the idea of the neighborhood hub coordinators in business districts.

and I mentioned this now because there is a nexus with OED and what we've been talking about around BIAs in general because OED is the body at the city that supports the creation of these business improvement areas and staffs them and make sure that they are getting the support they need from the city.

So I just wanted to extend my appreciation for you Council Member Herbold for having that discussion yesterday.

All right, seeing no other questions or comments, I will draw this meeting to a close.

Our next, it is now, because other people do this, it is now 1036. Our next meeting is scheduled for April 30th at 9.30 a.m.

And hearing no other comments or questions, this meeting is now adjourned.

Thank you very much.