With a yearlong initiative and powerhouse partnership, three of D.C.’s leading nonprofits are marking a new chapter in wealth building east of the Anacostia River.
Officially launched on March 30, the Seed to Storefront Pilot showcases a collective effort to chart upward mobility for small businesses in Wards 7 and 8, guided by the lens of: Building Bridges Across the River, D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center, and Washington Area Community Investment Fund (WACIF).
More than that, the program aims to reignite the power in prioritizing communal investment, all the while boosting what Scott Kratz calls the “heart and soul” of District neighborhoods.
“[Small businesses are] not only these pathways for economic generation, but they’re our employers, and they give the neighborhood the sort of feel of what makes home home,” Kratz, president and CEO of Building Bridges Across the River, told The Informer. “This is an opportunity to really remove barriers…to make sure that as these entrepreneurs are standing up a physical brick-and-mortar retail space, by bringing together these best-in-class nonprofits, it gives a much greater chance of success.”
The Seed to Storefront Pilot, funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation, centers on some of the strenuous barriers to entrepreneurial success among D.C.’s most underserved — and most notably, strives to tackle them all in one space.
From legal and technical assistance to scaling capital to forge sustainability, organization leaders say intentionality is the recurring theme for the program set to take off this summer.
“That’s the through line [of] all this. There’s this exciting opportunity to bring all of these phenomenal groups together for a specific cause of really refining what retail acceleration and retail support looks like,” said Messay Derebe, general director of the Anacostia Arts Center, one of two retail sites for the pilot. “We’re able to collaborate in a way that is not duplicative…the intentionality from the beginning of how we’re designing a shared application, we’re designing shared technical assistance.”
Plus, the multisector platform outlines an approach where redevelopment meets preservation, and evidently, the victor is the community itself.
“We’ve seen neighborhoods just transform in the blink of an eye, what normally would take place in a generation, and this is, I think, one of the last chances to really get it right,” Kratz continued. “We are working to build a more prosperous East of the River, making sure that long-term residents, entrepreneurs, small businesses can really thrive. How do we make sure that…this is community-driven, and really thoughtful?”
Transforming Ownership, Opportunities for D.C.’s Small Businesses
As cohort participants enjoy interactive learning and team building, much of the Seed to Storefront Pilot indulges a community-centered network.
Beyond revenue growth, Kratz highlighted the power of shifting dynamics in the predominantly Black Southeast quadrant by investing in the spaces that stand as a beacon of the community.
“We need to make sure that [Grounded: Plant Shop, Cafe, and Wellness Studio], Mama’s Pizza, the new Go-Go Museum are continuing to thrive. We need to make sure that the same tens of thousands of long-term residents who’ve benefited, or who have shaped this project, are the ones who can, in turn, benefit,” said the CEO, “and hopefully create a larger template for other places in the District, other places in the country, to follow.”
Where Opportunity Insights shows generational trends in economic mobility: household income in Washington, D.C., saw a -9.1% change between 1978 and 1992, compared to a national average of -4.2%. Additionally, the Harvard University-based research hub points to stark differences within the city alone, accounting for a $6.9k gap between Black and white low-income households.
Thus, with a $5,000 grant to support onboarding, selected businesses can relish free or reduced rent at the Anacostia Arts Center, or across 20,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space in the forthcoming Edmonson Building, set to come online this year as the second edifice in the decade-long Barry Farm Redevelopment project.
“We have to be stewards and neighbors, and we have a responsibility to provide the supports necessary to address the harms deep within this soil,” said Maia Shanklin Roberts, vice president of development for the Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH) at the Barry Farm Redevelopment. “When we often tell the story of community revitalization, it is a mesh with a narrative of gentrification. It’s often talked about where Black folks don’t get real opportunities to create businesses and flourish, and I think we have a real opportunity to create a resilient and thriving Black neighborhood that has all the amenities and features here, but that’s also affordable.”
Thanks to support from Wells Fargo, Building Bridges plans to fund grants for build-out and start-up costs, ongoing technical support, and access to working capital through WACIF’s lending programs.
Coupled with the integration of the Growth Acceleration and Performance Program (GAPP), the added component of WACIF’S Retail Ascent Technical Assistance Program amplifies the skills needed to support capital and market opportunity — grant writing, website development, point-of-sale systems, and security improvements — flanked by a business adviser who’s also a resident of Ward 8.
Additionally, Booz Allen Hamilton is set to boost momentum with expert-led advisory, including topics such as:
- retail readiness
- financial planning
- store operations and space management
- and business growth strategy.
As for the legalities, the Anacostia Arts Center’s Small Business Brief Advice Legal Clinics will serve 40–50 businesses through in-person and virtual consultations, propelling owners to secure tenancy, review leases, and position themselves for growth in the realm of neighborhood development.
Meanwhile, DC Pro Bono Bar staff attorney Martina Watson Pickett said the pilot serves as an alleviant to the “pain points” that can often impact the ability to sustain an enterprise, such as commercial leases, contracts, employment law, and other civil legal matters.
“Without that support and these resources that we offer, some businesses wouldn’t succeed in the way that they do,” Pickett continued. “It’s something that we can address from the beginning. To have the expert open hours, to answer any questions they have, tackling that head on with the help of the attorneys that we have, as well as any volunteer attorneys.”
Admittedly, economic development hardly shies away from the District, and the eight-ball shows a near future no different. This summer alone is shaping up for a major influx of foot traffic, with America’s fast-approaching 250th anniversary celebrations in July expected to draw an estimated 50 million visitors, according to Axios.
Southeast is also pointing to a multimillion-dollar climb in the coming years, namely through the anticipated completion of the POAH-led Barry Farm Redevelopment in 2029, and the 2028 opening of the 11th Street Bridge Park, which Kratz expects to attract 800,000 to 1.2 million visitors annually.
For Derebe, the Seed to Storefront vision comes at a pivotal moment to refine the core of economic wealth building, and how to do so with the community “at the heart.”
“If this program — from cultivating strong retailers that have lasting impact [standpoint] — was extremely successful, but the community five years from now felt like the neighborhood was less theirs than it was before, less recognizable to them, then this is not successful,” the director told The Informer. “Retailers are what are bringing people to these spaces. And so, as an important part of that, how do you create a vibrant community, and how do you make people want to be in a place? This will contribute to that.”
Rich in Culture and Entrepreneurship: A Plan for African American Wealth Building
In the spirit of intentionality and communal development, Building Bridges is teaming up with Partners in Equity and ResilNC to produce a public data assessment of the Anacostia River corridor small-business ecosystem — monitoring existing retailers, property ownership, key disparity clusters, and anchor institutions along the respective Martin Luther King Jr. and Marion Barry Avenues.
Kratz said the data findings will be shared publicly to help drive resource allocation and awareness for business owners throughout D.C., demonstrating a holistic lens to scaling impact beyond the width of the program.
“This is the fourth cohort that [Building Bridges has had] that received pro bono technical assistance from a team from Booz Allen. In the second cohort, [they] created their own grant writing team that brought in over a million dollars in available grants for small businesses — from [Grounded: Plant Shop, Cafe, and Wellness Studio] to the Go-Go Museum and others,” he explained. “If you took the cumulative investment that all of our organizations have been placing in D.C., and particularly east of the river, it would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. If we’re all working together, [we can] really make sort of a center for Black entrepreneurship in Ward 8.”
In her own words, Roberts echoed a similar desire to leverage intentionality in the backdrop of the Barry Farm Redevelopment.
“What I hope to bring to this project is not just the construction of buildings, but some thoughtfulness about how we can engender restorative practices, to start doing some of that healing work on both a community level and an individual level,” she told The Informer, highlighting food insecurity and mental health among focal examples. “Our responsibility [is] to continue to tell the story of the past, but also to help to shape its future.”
In what she calls a moment of reclamation for the Ward 8 community, Roberts told The Informer that building communal wealth is about more than revenue, but, in this case, reigniting a beacon of African American prosperity in Washington.
“In 100 years, when people do case studies on Barry Farm, they’re not just talking about the periods in which Black ownership and stewardship ended, [but] that this narrative continues, and we’re able to see this vibrant, mixed-income, amenity-rich, culturally diverse neighborhood,” she said, “that continues to feel like and look like D.C.”
With the cohort’s selected retailers to be announced by early June, Kratz touted high hopes for the inaugural pilot — and even more so, what it can do for the economic landscape of the nation’s capital overall.
“It is important to get [businesses] through that first year, but all of our collective investment is going to be here for many years to come,” he told The Informer. “When we can pull together, we can make a much bigger impact.”
Existing or novel retailers interested in the Seed to Storefront Pilot can learn more and apply here. This article is part of a national initiative exploring how geography, policy, and local conditions influence access to opportunity. Find more stories at economicopportunitylab.com/.
