Laura Sewell of East Village Community Coalition testifies on legacy business mapping

Thank you, Chair Thomas Henry and committee.

I'm Laura Sewell.

I'm the director of the East Village Community Coalition.

Our organization has long supported local independent businesses, having produced printed and online guides since 2006,

worked with SBS to form the East Village Merchants Association, and served on MVP Brewers Retail Task Force in 2019.

In this role, and as a member of the board of the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, LESPE, we are working to map legacy businesses on the Lower East Side and assist them in their efforts to be nominated for the State Historic Business Registry.

We appreciate CM Brewer's ongoing work on small business initiatives and have great interest in CM Maloney's Intro 874.

The city absolutely can and should do more for our local small businesses.

We'd like to learn more and have input into the eligibility requirements.

Not just small, but micro businesses are the ones that contribute the most to their communities and at the same time need the most support.

We're curious about the role of the LPC when businesses are not necessarily tied to historic buildings.

Community-based organizations often have more detailed data on their local neighborhood businesses than is available citywide.

And at least in our case, we stand ready to serve as value.

valuable resources to legislators and SBS on intro 874.

We are, we actually have data ready.

We're cleaning ready to share in a month or so.

And we hope it will be helpful.

We're happy to pass it on.

Thanks so much.

Thank you for your testimony.

Next up, Lisa Sorn.

Thank you.