Barrie’s Digital Main Street program could get longer.
City councillors approved a motion Monday night asking the provincial and federal governments to renew — and expand — their Digital Main Street program funding to help Barrie businesses survive the COVID-19 pandemic and to figure in the recovery of the Ontario economy in the future.
Final approval of this motion will be considered by city council at its March 1 meeting.
Many businesses have been significantly impacted during the pandemic, especially during the province-wide shutdown.
The Digital Main Street program has supported more than 215 main street businesses in Barrie, helping them adopt new online and digital tools and skills. Qualifying businesses have accessed $2,500 in digital transformation grants to successfully implement these digital tools within their business.
But as of Dec. 31, 2020, grant applications have no longer been accepted for the $2,500 digital transformation grant and specific funding administered by the city, which ends in March 2021.
The province and feds would also be requested to renew funding for the $2,500 digital transformation grant and digital service squad grant programs within the Digital Main Street portfolio.
Also these governments would be requested to expand the Digital Transformation Grant program to be available to all main street businesses — including those located outside of a designated Business Improvement Area (BIA).
Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman would also like a minimum two-year commitment from Ottawa and Queen’s Park for funding this extension to the Digital Main Street program.
Through Digital Main Street, local businesses get 10 hours of digital support at no cost from any of the digital service squad members, which can be used in a variety of ways: from setting up social media pages, to implementing an online shopping or booking platform, to increasing branding and product visibility, to understanding and using website analytics. Digital service squad members have put together a ‘menu’ of services for business owners to choose from.
Digital service squad members have been in contact with 330 businesses/clients within Barrie expressing interest in the program, and there are 184 active and eligible clients involved with the program, from waiting to start through to completion. The boundary for service included the BIA and extensions out into commercial (C1, C2) zones and Lehman said overall feedback has been positive.
The service squad, for example, worked with Grilled Cheese Social Eatery to help build and optimize a new business website for the Dunlop Street East restaurant, from start to finish.
Mexhico Restaurant is another business that was recently helped, as the digital service squad helped guide the Dunlop Street West eatery in building its online presence by covering topics that ranged from analytics to the importance of Google My Business.
Lehman says the city has received many requests for service outside of the BIA area, through general inquiries into the Small Business Enterprise Centre, as well as during the recovery consultation process with local businesses. Digital Main Street has also approved extending eligibility areas to any C3, C4 and C5 zoned businesses.
The Small Business Centre received $90,000 during two intake funding rounds of the program in addition to program funding provided directly to businesses through the digital transformation grant.
