The Silver Spring Penguin

Photo: Small businesses along Bonifant Street in Fenton Village. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP, with a major shoutout to Flickr user katmere.

While new construction threatens to raise commercial rents in Fenton Village, the county can help small businesses there with a little sumpin sumpin on the side, one planner suggested.

Financial aid could give new and existing small businesses there a boost, allowing them to benefit from an expected increase in foot traffic, senior planner Elza Hisel-McCoy told planning commissioners Thursday. He didn’t say whether that aid should be shaped like a long-term subsidy or formed as a one-time chunk of change, nor did he mention how much money would be needed.

“The county has programs to help small and minority-owned businesses,” Hisel-McCoy testified. He added that those programs should be explored further when the expansive Studio Plaza projects returns to the planning board for another round of regulatory review.

That mixed-use project proposes to drop at least 600 new residential units on Fenton Village, plus office and retail space. With such a dense mass of humanity packed between Fenton Street and Georgia, Thayer and Silver Spring avenues, retailers there are likely to do well, Hisel-McCoy said.

But one East Silver Spring resident wasn’t banking on short-term county aid to save some businesses. Karen Roper, with the East Silver Spring Civic Association (ESSCA), said Thursday the only aid a business could expect from MoCo was “a minor subsidy” if building access was blocked.

Instead, an ongoing rent subsidy for retail shops could smooth things over and encourage locally owned businesses to stick around, ESSCA member Jane Gorbaty suggested at a public forum in April on Fenton Village’s future. However, she didn’t get into how developers could be encouraged to offer subsidized retail space, or how a business might qualify for that kind of aid.

A web page for the county’s department of economic development doesn’t mention subsidies for small businesses, but “micro-loans” are available. The county also offers matching grants to businesses along Georgia Avenue that wish to trick out their storefronts, Mel Tull, economic development guy with Silver Spring’s regional center, told The Penguin.