Dear BRZ Members, 

Rent Relief 

Advocacy by BIAs and other stakeholders at all levels of government continues to help refine and provide more layers of help to those affected during this crisis. Today the PM announced the Canadian Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance program. While all the details are not yet available here is what we know now: 

• CECRA will provide a loan retroactive to April 1 to qualified commercial property owners supporting 50 per cent of rent for April, May, and June of this year. 
• The loan will be forgivable if the property owner and tenant come to a rent forgiveness agreement that lowers the eligible small business’s rent by 75 per cent for the three months and includes a moratorium on eviction. 
• The program is anticipated to be running by mid-May and will be administered by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). 
• Qualifying small businesses will be required to: 
  • pay less than $50,000 in rent  
  • have been asked to close, or near-close their operations due to COVID-19  
  • be experiencing at least a 70 per cent decrease in revenues 
• CECRA will also be available to non-profit and charitable organizations. 

• Join this City of Calgary Faceboook group to access up to date information for businesses: https://www.facebook.com/groups/calgarybizsupport/

• If you are a restaurant here is another link on which to promote your business: https://yyc.aint.cooking for businesses that are doing take-out and delivery.

• Calgary Herald’s Connect Local Businesses Directory:

• Here is the link to the directory:  http://calgaryherald.com/connectlocalbusiness

• And a link to the form itself (which you also get to from the directory):  http://yycconnectlocalbusiness.hscampaigns.com/

City Help for Businesses Data Reporting

Online hub

• Since live March 20, almost 15,000 pageviews to calgary.ca/covid-business. 

• Avg. time spent on pages 1 min 40 which demonstrates higher engagement. 

#SupportLocalYYC campaign

• Without any paid promotion, a far reach with over 900,000 impressions and generating over 11,500 positive reactions to our channels. This includes over 1,500 link clicks and over 900 shares all in less than a month.  

• April 15 launch with the help of our partners, our hash tag trended #1 on twitter in Calgary. 

• Support Local toolkit and Google maps  up to 600 page views each, with an avg. 2 and 3 minutes spent on those pages, demonstrating high engagement with the content. 

• Facebook group currently has 54 members reached by sharing via our partners and BIAs. We encourage you to start posting in the group and extending more invitations to you contacts moving forward. 
   

Request from Calgary Transit 

Can your business help?

“Calgary Transit provides public transit services to Calgarians on a 24/7/365 basis. To deliver this service, Transit maintains a fleet of 1100 buses and 200 LRT cars, which are operated by over 2300 Transit Operators. One tactic used to help provide a safe and clean work environment for our Operators and Customers, buses and trains are fitted with Purell hand-sanitzer dispensers within the operators compartment. Since the COVID-19 emergency began, the availability of replacement Purell bags has essentially stopped, and our Fleet maintenance teams have had to develop a method of refilling used Purell bags with the bulk hand sanitizer provided by Supply and CEMA. Although this process has worked for a couple of weeks, the bags we have been re-using are beyond their useful life, and cannot be maintained. Recognizing the fact that the supply of Purell bags (full or empty) from the manufacturer is not reliable at this time, Calgary Transit is looking to see if any organizations in Calgary are able to provide partly used or empty Purell bags that we can continue to re-use on our fleet. The bag is shown below and comes in 1L. It is installed in dispensing units on the Buses and LRV’s."

 https://www.gojo.com/en-CA/Search-Results#q=2156-08

Remember to please check your Kensington (kensingtonyyc.com) directory listing to make sure your business information is up to date regarding whether you are open or closed so we can do our best to help promote your business. Are you doing something special that we can feature on our website homepage? Please let us know.

Feedback Requested 

I know everyone is so busy but are you finding these newsletters helpful? Please send me a brief email if these updates are useful so I know whether to continue to provide them: kensingtonbrz@shaw.ca  Contact me directly if you want me to find information on a particular issue.

Until next Friday, stay healthy, 

Annie

Annie MacInnis
Executive Director
Kensington Business Revitalization Zone
200 203 10A Street NW
Calgary, AB, T2N 1W7
Cell: 403-969-3216
Email: kensingtonbrz@shaw.ca