Opinion: Street-Smart Strategies for NYC’s Small Business Future – City Limits

“We must confront a basic but often overlooked truth: supporting small businesses means investing in the commercial districts they rely on.”

This primary election season offered a powerful takeaway: new approaches can disrupt even the most entrenched establishments. Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, though lacking big money and relying heavily on digital tools, managed to reshape the conversation by deploying strategic tactics to connect with New Yorkers.

For our city’s small businesses, this lesson offers powerful possibilities about what’s achievable when underdogs embrace a new playbook—one that they too can use to survive and thrive.

In New York City, microbusinesses—those with fewer than 20 employees—account for roughly 15 percent of the city’s 4.3 million private-sector workers, employing approximately 635,000 people. This figure doesn’t even include the estimated 65,000 app-based delivery workers who support many of these businesses, nor the growing number of gig workers and sole proprietors who emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In New York City, these businesses are concentrated in industries like food service, retail, personal care, and professional services and are decidedly not located in shopping centers. Instead, they are central to the vitality of our city’s retail streets and corridors. That is why we must confront a basic but often overlooked truth: supporting small businesses means investing in the commercial districts they rely on.

Retail is undergoing a period of profound transition. Hybrid work has reshaped daytime foot traffic in many commercial districts, leading to a decline in weekday worker spending. At the same time, consumer behavior is increasingly shaped by social media—more than 60 percent of all retail sales are now digitally influenced, according to the National Retail Federation. Gen Z and Millennial shoppers—the first fully digital-native consumers—are coming to expect seamless experiences that bridge online and offline environments. And if small businesses can’t keep up, they risk falling behind.

But this moment isn’t just about technology. The fundamentals of street-level retail still matter. For retail districts to thrive in this new day and age, they must be places where people want to be. Based on decades of experience working with commercial districts across the country, I believe our small business policies shoud be grounded in three enduring principles that help create streets that attract and retain consumers:

• Access matters. Successful commercial corridors are easy, convenient, and comfortable to reach. That requires a multimodal approach to access: reliable public transit (trains, buses, ferries), safe biking infrastructure (one Toronto study found that replacing 12 parking spaces with a bike lane quadrupled retail sales on that block), walkable streets, and yes, in some cases, parking.
• Public spaces drive foot traffic. Safe, clean and attractive public spaces and destination-worthy amenities help bring people to local businesses. District-level marketing campaigns are especially valuable for small businesses with limited capacity to promote themselves. Parks, plazas, and street improvements also make a difference. When I lived in Jackson Heights, a trip to the P.S. 69 playground with my son often ended with a stop at Lety’s Bakery on 37th Avenue. That kind of everyday synergy between public space and small business strengthens neighborhoods.
• Access to capital is essential. Competing in today’s market requires investment—in digital tools, physical improvements, and storefront enhancements. But among small businesses, capital is scarce. According to JPMorgan Chase, U.S. small businesses have an average of just 27 days of cash reserves; for Black- and Hispanic-owned firms, that number drops below 21. And outdated signage regulations—largely untouched in the City of Yes for Economic Opportunity—often prevent businesses from promoting themselves effectively. We need to enable more flexible options like blade signs, sandwich boards, outdoor displays, and affordable options for outdoor dining.

Yet another looming challenge that we must grapple with is the generational transition already underway—what some call the “Silver Tsunami.” Nearly 73,000 businesses in New York City are owned by Baby Boomers who will retire or transition out in the next decade. Without support, these businesses risk closing rather than being passed on. With the right tools in place, we can facilitate handoffs to family members, employees, or emerging entrepreneurs.

To meet this moment, City Hall must align the often-siloed programs and policies that touch small businesses—across agencies like Small Business Services, Transportation, Sanitation, and Planning. This requires strong mayoral leadership with a clear, integrated vision for our city’s small businesses. 

New York is at a crossroads. We have the opportunity—and the obligation—to reimagine what small business support looks like in a 21st-century city. Now is the time to seize it. 

Larisa Ortiz is managing director of the public and non-profit solutions team at Streetsense, a former New York City planning commissioner, and the architect of the City’s Commercial District Needs Assessment (CDNA)—a framework developed with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) for the NYC Department of Small Business Services.