Lake Street Council

Technical Assistance and Small Business Advising: The Lake Street Council provides small business advising in English, Spanish, and Somali. In 2024, our focus has moved to providing vital support to small businesses and entrepreneurs still struggling to succeed under challenging circumstances. We launched a workshop series focused on maintaining financial documentation, building credit, and planning for business expansion. We provided grants to businesses to improve their properties. We supported businesses through road construction.

We Love Lake Street (WLLA) Recovery Fund: In late May 2020, civil unrest erupted in the Lake Street corridor. More than 400 businesses were looted, damaged, or destroyed by fire in the aftermath. The events that unfolded during those weeks have had a deep and lasting impact on Lake Street. The broader community came together to support these impacted businesses, and the WLLS recovery fund raised more than $12 million dollars in a matter of weeks. The purpose of the WLLS recovery fund is to support the recovery of businesses and nonprofit organizations in the Lake Street corridor. To facilitate the distribution of funds, we created the WLLS recovery fund oversight committee (the "oversight committee"), which includes local leaders with a history of supporting Lake Street's diverse business community. The oversight committee was charged with making decisions about funding priorities and guidelines. The oversight committee's subcommittees decided who received funding and in what amount. In 2024 this fund continued to invest in grants and forgivable loans to displaced businesses that were seeking to reopen, to entrepreneurs who owned demolished properties who were seeking predevelopment support to start the process of rebuilding, and to community nonprofits that sought to redevelop demolished property to provide affordable commercial space for local small businesses.