One of the most historic sites in Minneapolis was where business and city leaders began a celebration of Black-owned businesses Monday.
Mayor Jacob Frey noted that the eighth annual Black Business Week in Minneapolis begins four days before the start of Black Business Month.
"You know, we want to get a little bit of a head start here," Frey said. "We care so much about it, we don't want to give you the short end of the stick and give you like the shortest month in the year because we've done that before. We want to extend it a little bit, so this is making up for February being 28 days."
Frey says it’s simply not easy to start a business as a Black owner.
"What we want to do is make sure that we're easing and streamlining the process, that we're making sure that people have access to capital, access to financing, that they have a direct touch point with the city so that we've got business and technical support that is available to them," Frey says. "So that no matter what kind of business it is, they want to open right here in Minneapolis."
The mayor spoke at the century-old Coliseum building at the corner of Lake and Hiawatha, still home of a glorious ballroom, and now home of four Black-owned businesses.
They moved in following the destruction of the George Floyd riots, and is a growing hub for small businesses, many of them Black-owned.
