The death of George Floyd has prompted fresh calls to support the black community, but some of its business owners, hit hard by looting on the South and West sides, say the enthusiasm will not be enough to help them get ahead.
Some business owners plan to rebuild, and most support the protests that swept the country after the death of Floyd, a black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police.
But as they survey the damage, doubts emerge as they worry about their own livelihoods and their neighborhoods if the businesses fold.
M&R Prescription Center, in the South Shore neighborhood, was vandalized early last Sunday morning. Intruders broke the window with a rock, and stole drugs off the shelves, she said.
Owner Pamela Jones reopened the pharmacy and medical equipment company, albeit with boarded-up windows, but she’s considering turning down a $25,000 city grant she earlier was awarded to improve the store.
“You want to be there for the community, but then when the community is not there for you, it’s just very disheartening,” Jones said. “You question yourself. ‘Why am I still here? What’s the purpose?'”
Jones’ concern is shared by many black-owned businesses on the South and West sides. Though community backing has bolstered some, many owners do not count on the increased support for black-owned businesses, or the $10 million Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised to help them rebuild.
“It’s not just that we’re a black-owned business. We’re a business in a black community, and those businesses are scarce,” Jones said. “Each time you destroy one, when and how will your needs be met?”
The looting at 3 Smokin Sisters Tobacco Shop helped Renee White, who owns the shop with her two sisters, better understand the broader role the South Shore business plays in the community, she said. The shop sells vapes, CBD products, hookahs, pipes and more, but people also stop in to chat.
“People came around and started saying, ‘You can’t close,'” White said. “That kind of changed our minds about maybe we’re not just a smoke shop. We’re actually very useful in the community.”
Still, White is moving forward with trepidation. The incident last Sunday was the second break-in at the shop this year.
Kimbark Beverage Shoppe, a liquor store in Hyde Park that has been in the neighborhood since 1963, was ransacked the same day by a group of 20 people, said owner Jonathan T. Swain.
Swain, whose family has owned the shop since 1974, put signs on the boarded-up windows the next day flagging it as a black-owned business and pleading: “Please don’t Please don’t.”
Swain estimates the store sustained $100,000 to $300,000 in damage and income losses. He hopes insurance will cover the losses and wants to reopen as soon as Wednesday.
More important, he said, is that the broader issues that led to the unrest aren’t overlooked.
“Am I upset about the loss? Yeah, I am. Do I understand it? I understand it, too,” Swain said. “I’m not mad at (the looters) at all. … My hope is that real conversations will take place that take real honest looks at inequity in America, going back to the founding.
“We don’t get many more chances like this to address it.”
Already, many of Chicago’s black-owned businesses were buckling from pressure caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Some had just restocked their stores, preparing to reopen after months of a state-mandated shutdown. Others hoped to recoup revenue by selling winter inventory that had sat unsold since the shutdown, but now that inventory is gone.
“Looting just put the nail in the coffin,” said Michael Rembert, manager at MP Mall, a shopping mall with about 35 businesses, 11 of which are black-owned, in the East Garfield Park neighborhood.
They took “everything they could get a dollar for,” from coffee pots and microwaves to cash registers and merchandise, Rembert said. The only thing left behind was the occasional pair of socks or a gym shoe.
At least five stores in the mall will not reopen, Rembert said. Few store owners had insurance to cover the losses, and others are discouraged. They live paycheck to paycheck, and are worried about reinvesting in their businesses, he said.
“I don’t know what to tell the tenants. I have no answer for them. It’s just bleak,” he said. “In a business, if you have no money to put up for this kind of stuff, it kills you.”
Even if repairs were made and stores were restocked, Rembert said it wouldn’t fix a problem the mall has long battled: attracting customers despite nearby drug activity. Additionally, none of the businesses at MP Mall received loans from the federal Paycheck Protection Program to help with pandemic losses, Rembert said.
“These conditions were very dangerous for a poor community under pressure,” he said.
Before the pandemic put people out of jobs and looters pillaged David Bender’s UPS Store franchise in Bronzeville, he was concerned about the store’s future.
Bender opened the store in the Lake Meadows Shopping Center three years ago because of city plans to rebuild the area, including the redevelopment of the former Michael Reese Hospital site that’s been vacant since 2008. He has been disappointed.
“The value of the community was supposed to be on the rise,” Bender said. “I have not seen the type of investment that I had been told I could expect over time.”
Bender partially reopened Wednesday to allow people to pick up packages, with a “Black Owned Please Do Not Destroy” sign posted to the window. Along with Subway and Dunkin’, his was among very few businesses open in the shopping mall.
He said it has been difficult to succeed in a community that is largely low-income or no-income because people don’t spend as much, and he can’t charge as much. Customers were outraged when he raised the price on one product by five cents, he said.
The mass unemployment wrought by the pandemic, which disproportionately hit people in lower-wage jobs, made things worse, he said. For businesses to succeed in the neighborhood there needs to be a total systems overhaul that tackles racial equality in education, employment and policing that the protests have sought to highlight.
“What would help is if people invested in the community and there were resources here that would allow people to progress and succeed,” Bender said.
The recent unrest only added to existing challenges.
Operating in communities with lower incomes can mean higher costs for business expenses such as security, said Benét DeBerry-Spence, head of the Department of Managerial Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. At the same time, the businesses bring in less revenue because their customers spend less — a trend exacerbated by the pandemic.
Small black-owned businesses have difficulty accessing capital or funding through traditional bank loans, and face higher supply chain costs because they don’t have the efficiencies of larger competitors.
Because they are so squeezed, businesses find ways to cut costs to survive, DeBerry-Spence said. In some cases that means skimping on insurance, which means they have no way to recover from events beyond their control.
Though there are programs that support minority-owned businesses, not everyone can take advantage of them. PPP, for example, has proven a challenge during the pandemic because some banks that black-owned businesses worked with weren’t equipped to handle the applications.
Nationwide, just 8% of African American small business owners received the full amount of federal coronavirus assistance they applied for, according to a survey of 500 small business owners conducted last month by public affairs firm Global Strategy Group.
There were about 1 million minority-owned businesses in the country in 2017, including 124,001 black-owned businesses, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In Chicago, there were 1,875 black-owned businesses, which accounted for about 3.7% of all businesses, excluding those without employees.
The outpouring of community support for the black community on social media during the past week won’t be enough to change systemic issues, said Jacob Robbins, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“It’s not just going to be people on social media donating $5, $10 or ordering takeout from the restaurants,” he said. “We need something from the city. We need something from the state.”
Chicago corporations can help, too, said Lester Barclay, owner of Barclay Law Group in Bronzeville, which works with small business owners in the neighborhood. If corporations contributed to a loan fund for shops on the South and West sides, that could make a real, lasting difference, he said.
Jewel-Osco on Friday announced a $1 million contribution to the city’s rebuilding fund. Other companies and celebrities are also making contributions to black-owned businesses, including rapper Kanye West and meal delivery platforms are featuring black-owned restaurants.
“This is your chance,” Barclay said. “Sometimes out of certain tragedies come opportunities, and this is the challenge that the Chicago broader business community faces.”
Some businesses are overwhelmed by the decision they face.
Chella Holcomb’s custom gift shop Luv Handles caught fire last Sunday evening in Bronzeville.
“Everything burnt, everything’s gone,” she said.
Encouraged by customers, she plans to rebuild, but with a mountain of debt, she doesn’t know where to start.
“Right now, mentally, I’m just drained, trying to get my appetite so I can eat,” she said. “It’s just like, my baby gone, you know?”
Finding the emotional wherewithal to rebuild a store is a different challenge from securing the financing, said Michele Rogers, director of Chicago partnerships and a clinical assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
“It’s bigger than this business that was like a second child or a first child. To many it becomes, ‘My spirit is weak now,'” she said. “It’s hard to find that passionate energy that people had when they developed the business the first time.”
“That drive has to be there, and I think it’s slower to return because of the other things going on in our country right now.”
Dave Williams has that drive. His apparel shop, Kulture Chicago, already had been broken into three or four times, and he predicted that the looting that occurred last weekend — which caused him to lose about $15,000 of merchandise — will increase his insurance rates.
But Williams wants to rebuild his Bronzeville shop.
“I believe (the community) will come back from it, the whole thing is how fast will we come back from it,” he said. “We have to learn how to treat each other, first of all. … It’s a waste of time to burn down a community.”
Lauren Zumbach contributed.
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