Business Adaptations to COVID-19: Arvada Resiliency Taskforce
The Takeaways
Having an in-place healthy and trusting relationship infrastructure that includes local businesses, stakeholders, and municipalities is essential.
Efficient and open communication allows for changes to happen more quickly.
Documentation and data collection are essential for long-term success.
“Business owners should work to infuse resiliency into their DNA, whether that is knowledge of resources, implementing skills, preparedness, leaning on relationships, etc. This allows your organization to be better poised to self-manage disruptions during a crisis and ensure their ability to persevere. Similarly, communities should develop an infrastructure, including the tools, education and resource networks for businesses to build that resiliency.”
The Case Study
The City of Arvada identified community resilience as a strategic goal in its 2020-2025 plan and worked with the Colorado Resiliency Office to develop a resilience framework that positioned the City to be responsive to disruptions. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the culture of resilience was active. Arvada’s Economic Development Association (AEDA) had two core systems in place before the pandemic started: solid and trusting relationships and a culture of innovation. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, the local Chamber of Commerce and AEDA came together and asked two crucial questions - who is here at the table and who is missing from the table? In return, the Arvada Resiliency Taskforce was created in early March 2020 to help the community cope with the crisis and its effects on local businesses.
The Taskforce included a cross-section of local partners including the Apex Parks & Recreation District, Olde Town Business Association, the visitor Center, local non-profit organizations, and the Arvada Center for the Arts. Once formed, the Chamber and AEDA began to give structure to the Taskforce while keeping the conversations open and honest. The Taskforce got to work on daily video calls to triage questions coming in from local businesses about conflicting health orders and clearing up rumors about what was happening during the early phase of response to COVID-19.
The Taskforce’s success was built on the foundation of relationships. Together, they created a culture of “we are all in this together.” They built trust as a community, leaned on each other, and fostered open and organic conversations. They also prioritized connecting with other cities to share ideas and lessons learned as the pandemic changed programs and processes almost daily. Their culture of innovation and communication allowed the group to be highly responsive and agile. It became easier and quicker to turn ideas into action as the group embraced risk and put trust in their collaboration.
Through feedback from local businesses, AEDA proposed partnering with the City of Arvada on developing an interest-free, partially forgivable loan program targeted at small brick-and-mortar businesses in Arvada. The business loans were converted to grants when the City received CARES Act funding. Nearly $4.4 million in grants went to 318 Arvada businesses. This contributed to the retention of 3,267 jobs and $2.1 million in annual sales tax revenue for the City of Arvada. Another adaptation was publishing the Creative Commerce page, which hosts a list of local businesses and how they adapt to regulations imposed during COVID-19.
The ability to come together, provide structure, and communicate effectively is what kept Arvada’s local economy afloat during the pandemic. However, the rapid changes brought challenges. In some cases, the Taskforce developed short-term fixes to situations that had long-term needs. For example, some businesses were left out due to formalities, such as not having historical data to be eligible because it was a new business.
In the future, the Taskforce hopes that their detailed documentation throughout this event can help with future endeavors and assist other regions. They developed a report to share their work. Next, they hope to continue to embed this work into various strategic initiatives such as business retention and resiliency. They also plan to continue relationships and build on the work they were able to do together. Finally, they plan to continue training and analyzing the impact of their work to determine what needs to be continued or replicated. They hope to get more businesses on board to plan for resiliency.