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Date: 4/28/2021
CHICOPEE – The City of Chicopee and the Chicopee Chamber of Commerce are working with the MassDevelopment Transformative Development Initiative (TDI) Partnership and the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC) to help local businesses recover from the effects of COVID-19. The Local Rapid Recovery Planning Initiative surveyed businesses in Chicopee Center to gather feedback and ideas for plans to move the city forward economically.
According to Julie Copoulos, executive director of the Greater Chicopee Chamber of Commerce, this initiative was a state response to COVID-19. After the city applied for funding, they were awarded a grant of $60,000 for “technical assistance.”
“The idea is to generate an action-oriented plan to help Chicopee businesses develop strategy for recovery. So this technical assistance planning will help us come up with some strategies and programming ideas to help businesses in the coming year,” said Copoulos.
The planning will take place over a five month period and will be a business-led initiative, said Copoulos. The first step in gathering feedback was sending out surveys to all businesses in Chicopee Center. Survey questions included business satisfaction with safety near their location, quality of sidewalks and outside areas, ideas to make the community more vibrant, how COVID-19 has affected individual business sales, ideas for possible new businesses to attract to the city and more.
“We emailed, we called and we did a little walk around just to make sure we were being equitable in our outreach,” said Copoulos.
Now that the surveys have been collected, Copoulos said the next step will be to go through the data and responses with the help of PVPC.
“We will continue to work with Pioneer Valley Planning Commission in figuring out what programming is happening currently and what we can do to enhance the landscape in a way that’s consistent with what the businesses want,” she said. “The idea is to use their expertise in developing some of these planning strategies, both enhancing them and making us more competitive for grant funding in the future.”
According to Copoulos, there are already exciting projects happening in Chicopee Center that will help revitalize and boost the economy. Some of these projects include a new bike loop, a new farmers market opening in June and Chicopee Center Park opening as a food truck park in the next month or two.
With the survey responses collected and more plans developing, Copoulos said she is excited for the future of Chicopee Center and that businesses can have their voices heard.
“I think the really important thing about this is that it’s a business-led initiative,” she said. “We live in a little vacuum in our offices and it’s really important for these initiatives and these grants to really come from the voices of the businesses. We want to represent our businesses' voices and we want to write grants with them in mind and with them driving what we’re doing.”