Colfax Downtown Association receives $2.25 million in funds for incubator program

COLFAX — Colfax Downtown Association received $2,259,820 from The Washington State Department of Commerce Small Business Innovation Fund (SBIF) grants, which ranged from $500,000 to $5 million, coming out to a total of $32.5 million grants awarded to 22 different projects out of over 120 proposals.

The SBIF funds awarded funded a variety of activities, which included small business incubators and accelerators, support for local procurement initiatives, improvements to physical workspaces in response to public health requirements or acts of vandalism, support for small business competitiveness programs focusing on hiring and retention, as well as projects increasing small business’s ability to succeed and thrive.

“We received an unprecedented amount of funding requests,” Managing Director of Small Business Finance and Community Support, Linda Womack, said “The selected pool of organizations represents a wide range of projects that will help small businesses across the state access innovative new programs and services to help them build and grow.”

“This is an opportunity to provide lower rental overhead for our tenants, so that they can have a leg up in getting started and create better sustainability outcomes for each business.” Colfax Downtown Association Executive Director, Whitney Bond said, explaining that an incubator houses multiple tenants within one property.

“We want to attract two restaurants to Main Street, so that we can have more food options locally,” said Bond, “Our idea is to have a shared seating space to where two restaurants can share seating and have a breakfast lunch place, and a dinner place,” adding that this would give Colfax access to food morning and late evening.

A press release from the Department of Commerce states that the SBIF supports community based programs and services that meet the needs of Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC), entrepreneurs, women-owned small businesses, and businesses located in underserved, low-income and rural parts of the state.

Bond explained that while there is a targeted demographic of applicants that they’re looking to house, due to the Department of Commerce earmarking helping BIPOC and women owned businesses, everyone can apply, those applicants will just take precedence.

“This funding will also help train these individuals while the build is taking place, so we will provide them with various training to support them in their endeavors of becoming successful,” Bond said “Skills training for social media, accounting, business planning and other various training.”

Bond explained that the Downtown Association seeks to attract more tourism downtown, promote foot traffic, and bring in some of the traffic that comes through town. She further stated that the Association has to have the project complete by June 2023, which will make it a fast moving grant and project execution.

“Stay tuned as we will be marketing this opportunity in the next few months,” Bond said, noting that there will be more information to come.