Minority spending goal has increased
Downtown’s development agency is boosting its minority business goal to 25 percent from a longtime standard of 20 percent.
The Downtown Memphis Commission board on Thursday adopted the new goal for the agency’s in-house spending and recommended it also be applied to incentives ranging from tax freezes to development loans and grants.
“What we want to do is officially raise the bar,” board chairman Carl Person said. “We’re glad we’re having this conversation. It is a very, very relevant conversation that the city and county are all having. I think everybody’s having it. We just want to be ahead of the game.”
It’s a significant increase, but stops short of a 32 percent goal suggested during the commission’s annual retreat in February.
Officials said the agency’s intention is to always exceed the goal, and they noted that has consistently been the case over the past dozen or so years.
“Always our goal is to exceed expectations and to get as much inclusive participation as we possibly can,” Person said.
Jay Goff, who oversees DMC’s equal business opportunity program, said minorityand women-owned businesses accounted for 31 percent of eligible spending on major projects since 2010, and 26 percent since 2005.
“We continue to strive to do better,” Goff said. “So we’re trying to even do better than these great numbers.”
The DMC program requires incentive recipients to make a best-faith effort to meet the spending goal on design and renovation or construction of a project. It also requires them to follow a “utilization plan” documenting efforts to meet the goal.
The commission’s discussion comes at a time when minority spending is a trending topic in Memphis.
Memphis recently announced The 800 Initiative to increase annual revenues of 800 minority-owned companies by $50 million by 2023. Black businesses' estimated share of citywide business receipts in 2016 was less than 1 percent.
The commission’s new goal was recommended by a diversity committee that included representatives of staff, affiliated boards and Joann Massey, director of the city’s Office of Minority and Women Owned Business Development.
The percentage of city contracts to minority businesses has risen to 21 percent during the Strickland administration from 12 percent when Strickland took office.
African-American businesses have accounted for nearly 60 percent of $109 million in expenditures covered by the Downtown Memphis Commission policy since 2010, with businesses owned by white women accounting for nearly 32 percent, according to a DMC diversity report.
The report says 34 percent of about $262 million in eligible spending on projects currently under construction has gone to minority- and women-owned businesses.