The owners received a $1 million loan from the city’s Fresh Food Retailer Initiative, a program aimed at increasing residents’ access to fresh food. According to reports at the time, $500,000 of the loan was forgivable.
Seems to be a tragic confluence of bad-faith investments, management disorder, new disruptive businesses taking away some of the sales, and the lack of resilience in the city around its increasing environmental challenges. Still, I’d like to see what else this fund ended up supporting and what those places are doing now.
Some relevant quotes from Ian’s story linked below:
One of lenders that funded the store’s reopening was First NBC Bank, the local financial institution that collapsed last spring and continues to send ripples through the New Orleans business community. Boudreaux said his loan was acquired by another financial institution which has been more aggressive.
“We opened with the finances upside down to begin with, and it got worse,” he said.
The city also provided a $100,000 Economic Development Fund grant, and the Louisiana Office of Community Development provided a loan for $1 million. The store also received $2.2 million in historic tax credit equity and $2.2 million in new market tax credit equity.
Meanwhile, Boudreaux has accused some relatives of stealing money from the family-run business.
While these issues have been ongoing, Boudreaux pointed to the August 2017 flood as perhaps the last straw for the business. That disaster, spurred by a summer downpour that revealed widespread problems with the city’s drainage systems, swamped the store and knocked out much of its food-storage equipment.
Here’s my post on the first store closure that had been a recipient.
I mention Circle Food in this piece on another public market site:
Helping Public Markets Grow 