Pretext & Introduction
Pretext
In November of 2023, Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative (AWBI) set out with a door-to-door strategy to engage Black businesses in Atlanta to share the content within this brief.
We interviewed the owner of BUZZ Coffee and Winehouse, a coffee shop building community in the city’s historic Cascade Heights neighborhood, among others. The owner shared with us that after a five-year tenure and weathering the worst of the pandemic, BUZZ would be closing its doors in less than a week due to a 22.2 percent increase in commercial rent. The news of BUZZ’s closure, alongside the closure of other small businesses across the city,1 inspired AWBI to research the extent of the problem in Atlanta’s neighborhoods. With this brief, we seek to make the case that Black businesses are neighborhood well-being assets that deserve to be shielded from displacement.
Introduction
The closure of Black-owned businesses in Atlanta threatens the core identities and economic vibrancy of the city’s historically Black neighborhoods.2
The displacement of these small businesses is a trend that has been observed over recent decades.3 Migration and economic development patterns intensify market pressures that spur the displacement of businesses in the city’s historically Black neighborhoods.4 Policy debates about the economic stabilization of neighborhoods must include strategies that protect Black-owned small businesses from displacement.5
Atlanta’s ranking as a top hub for Black businesses underscores the need to create a favorable policy environment where they can thrive, which can simultaneously promote well-being in the city’s neighborhoods.6 Studies show that neighborhood small business density affects local economic outcomes; they have the ability to increase per capita income and employment within their localities.7 Moreover, small businesses matter for local economic outcomes as they hire local staff, influence higher levels of perceived neighborhood safety, and provide further broad economic and social benefits for adults and children in the neighborhoods where they operate.8 But while a few studies have examined the impacts of small businesses on neighborhood well-being, very few, if any, have examined the unique impacts of Black-owned businesses.
This brief blends resident and business owner interviews with a rich dataset of Black-owned businesses in the City of Atlanta to examine the relationships between small Black-owned business density and neighborhood well-being.9 The brief also summarizes opportunities and challenges that Black-owned businesses in Atlanta currently face while contextualizing key indicators such as business size, revenues, and more. Drawing parallels between the importance of small businesses and community outcomes allows us to demonstrate the need to protect, invest in, and scale small, Black-owned businesses as a vehicle to bolster community wealth.
Specifically, this report finds that:
- Black-owned small businesses may significantly improve neighborhood well-being in Atlanta.
- Black-owned small businesses are being priced out because the size and price of retail space in Atlanta far exceeds what Black-owned small businesses can afford.
- Atlanta is overdue for policy reforms that establish commercial tenant protections, codify historically Black commercial districts, and protect new and legacy businesses from displacement.
