The only option is a fair, equitable, just, and clean recovery.

First, we must keep businesses in their stores and offices. Then, we must revitalize small businesses as the key to a more equitable recovery. Small businesses, especially those with fewer than 100 employees, have been the bedrock of employment in New York City. Over the past decade, small businesses have accounted for ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of job growth in our city. Our plan:

Revitalize small businesses.

• Keep businesses in their stores and offices through an eviction moratorium, coupled with Art’s “Cancel Debt” strategy

• Incentivize landlords to open up vacant storefronts for pop-up retail and art installations

• Ensure workers in early-reopening businesses have access to vaccinations

• Create an “Innovation Corps” of entrepreneurs who can help shepherd & mentor new small businesses

• Focus on stabilization and improving business practices of “micro-businesses” to enable sustainability and position for growth

• Re-think future of the most distressed industries -- especially restaurants, retail, and arts and entertainment

• Leverage business schools at CUNY, Columbia, and NYU

• Create internships for high school and college students

• Modernize unsustainable business models and practices

• Deliver universal broadband

• Organize a massive investment in new, truly affordable, carbon-free housing, creating construction jobs

• Drive innovation in building construction, including City-based pre-fabrication of building components

• Implement Universal Childcare, creating thousands of community-based jobs that pay a living wage to care for our City’s youngest children

Commit to Save the Restaurants of NYC

• Revenues. Street dining is essential for restaurants and bars. I will:

  • Extend street dining at least until March 31, 2022

  • Convene a citywide effort to redesign our streets with long-term sidewalk occupancy for restaurants, bars, and other retailers 

• Rent. As I laid out in my Housing plan, I will:

  • Extend the eviction moratorium to March 31, 2022

  • Extend the foreclosure moratorium to March 31, 2022

  • Work with the financial services industry to extend mortgages and cancel accrued debt from the moratoria

• Property taxes and other fees. I will:

  • Cancel tax increases and create an easy application process for deferrals, including modification of the 18% payment for late tax payments

• Credit card fees. I will:

  • Work with credit card processors to create relief for all retailers in NYC by lowering fees

  • Create more competition in credit card processing

• Delivery apps. City Council has passed much-needed limitations on delivery fees. I would go further:

  • Work with the NYC tech industry to create an NYC delivery app

• Marketing and promotion. I will:

  • Create a user-friendly online and mobile service to enable all retailers to post their openings and closings

  • Using the City’s promotion and marketing power to celebrate the restaurant industry, in conjunction with established non-profit and industry organizations

• Business assistance. I will:

  • Align and consolidate into a single service the various agencies that regulate restaurants, bars, and retailers

  • Create a volunteer “Innovator Corps” of successful business people and entrepreneurs to provide advice to emerging businesses 

  • Leverage culinary and business schools to support restaurants to speed recovery and strengthen the industry

#NewYorkNext Strategic City-Wide Planning.

Use the City’s marketing power to:

• Support restaurants & other businesses as they re-open and need to accommodate changing hours, capacity, reservations, etc.

• Act strategically for 2022; create marketing campaigns for themed events that can attract tourists, both domestic and international

• Create a free online directory of open small businesses and a calendar of events to promote regional tourism to NYC

Deliver a more coordinated, proactive, collaborative City government, united around a common interest to grow our City forward. The City can:

• Lead a digital transformation of government, with a reliable web infrastructure to provide services to city residents

• Streamline and coordinate regulatory oversight - businesses should be able to call the City government for advice, rather than the government simply being a punitive entity

• Create a single point of contact for storefront tenants

• Carefully examine City-controlled business costs like property taxes and other fees

• Become a PARTNER to businesses

• Renovate the City’s procurement process to include more M/WBE and local businesses with a priority on innovation and cost-efficiency

• Using the City’s convening power to

  • Negotiate for relief on business costs, like credit card processing fees

  • Resolve differences between parties that delay or block successful business re-opening post-COVID