From left: Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn at the announcement (source: Mayor’s Office)

This morning, the city announced an initiative to amp up efforts to promote small businesses and neighborhood retail corridors, through extensive marketing support and training programs. The city’s program, Building Blocks for Neighborhood Retail, will aid commercial areas in their efforts to market vacant space to potential tenants, providing them with demographic and market data profiles of their communities. The program is supposed to continue the successes the city says it has already seen in its efforts to attract new businesses to specially designated “commercial corridors”: in fiscal year 2011, 99 new businesses opened in commercial districts that were targeted by the Department of Small Business Services to attract new retailers. – Jane C. Timm [more]

A new, 8,000-square-foot state- and federal-funded business center is set to open in Yonkers next month, according to the Wall Street Journal, as part of an ongoing effort to attract more small businesses to the area. The business complex, known as the Y-Enterprise initiative, will provide eight small businesses with office space for three years, with low-cost rents ranging from $500 to $2,500 per month. This so-called business incubator, which received almost $1 million in state and federal funds, is the latest step Yonkers has taken to revitalize its business community, after large manufacturers, such as Alexander Smith Carpet and Otis Elevator, moved out. [more]

The industrial zones set aside by Mayor Michael Bloomberg five years ago are having trouble holding onto their boundaries as hotels, superstores, and other retail businesses move into the areas. A recent New York Industrial Retention Network report says that although residential conversion is prohibited in 16 areas in the outer boroughs, as per the Bloomberg administration’s policy, non-industrial businesses are setting up shop there anyway. The report says 39 sites within the zones are non-industrial, including two bowling alleys, an art gallery, and a number of bars in Williamsburg; and a shopping center in East Greenpoint. The industrial zoning was intended to keep real estate prices low, but industrial rents are up to $18 per square foot, which is double the price in 2000. Industrial advocates say companies are being driven out of the city in the absence of zoning enforcement, while a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Small Business Services said some commercial development can be “healthy” for industrial zones.