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The Dripby Brew Editors9:16 pmNov 23, 20120

Mayor to promote Small Business Saturday

While County’s Kamenetz opines that shoppers should go to small businesses “all around the Beltway.”

Following the mass consumptive orgy known as Black Friday, a modest promotional effort will take place tomorrow to encourage shopping at small businesses in Baltimore.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake will visit five businesses, ranging from a sweets shop in Pigtown to a gifts and consignment store in Mount Washington, to “encourage people to avoid the hassles of big-box stores by shopping at unique locations in the city.”

Accompanied by residents and business leaders, Rawlings-Blake will visit Art of Candy, at [see comment from Pigtown Main Street below] 782 Washington Blvd., at 2 p.m. as part of Small Business Saturday.

Other mayoral stops will include a barber shop on West Baltimore Street (Royal Razor) and a landscape design business on Belair Road (Week End CUTZ) before ending at 5 p.m. at Mount Washington’s La Chic Boutique, according to her official schedule.

Rawlings-Blake is not alone in her devotion to small businesses.

In a dueling press release today, Kevin Kamenetz, the Baltimore County executive, announced his support of Small Business Saturday – but with a different pitch that shoppers should visit “one of the outstanding small businesses in Baltimore County, located all around the Beltway.”

“Let’s make Small Business Saturday a rousing success,” Kamenetz declared.

Micro-Loans to Businesses

For Baltimore’s mayor, tomorrow’s tour will provide a platform to tout her new business initiative, a revolving micro-loan fund to support small, minority and women-owned businesses.

Earlier this week, the Board of Estimates approved $125,000 in general funds to capitalize the program, with a $250,000 supplemental grant expected to come from the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development.

Dubbed BaltimoreMICRO, the fund will offer $5,000-$30,000 loans to qualifying businesses for the acquisition of commercial property, rehabilitation of existing buildings, leasehold improvements, equipment purchases and “other costs associated with operating a small business.”

According to Rawlings-Blake, the goal is to “provide working capital to businesses to support the creation of full-time, high-quality, year-round employment opportunities and to stabilize existing employment opportunities in Baltimore.”

The micro-loan fund will be administered by the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC), an agency that is used to handling much larger tax-relief programs, such as TIFs and PILOTs, for city developers.

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