PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — As many small businesses that have occupied the Lloyd Center relocate, Portland leaders are offering funding for those continuing operations in the area.
Prosper Portland is allocating a total of $153,000 to the mall’s tenants that are working to move to other storefronts in the city’s Lloyd-Holladay Tax Incremental Finance District. The new grant was developed in response to an announcement the Lloyd Center would close on Aug. 8, the economic development agency’s Project Coordinator Kiana Ballo told KOIN 6.
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“There’s a lot of businesses that have been there for a long time, and this is a really hard moment so anything that we can do to try and support them as much as possible with the grant is what we were really looking to do,” Ballo said. “This was a unique situation where, in a lot of our districts, we use our existing grant programs because they work — and we knew that maybe wasn’t the best fit for this.”
A working group for Prosper Portland’s Lloyd-Holladay TIF District had already identified supporting Lloyd Center businesses as a top priority, along with activating more storefronts, according to Ballo. She added that districts across the central city have faced high vacancy rates since the pandemic…