KC Counts shares studio time with John Muñoz and Liana Angrisani to discuss challenges facing downtown businesses and how the DLCP aims to address them. Part 1 of this 2-part interview is transcribed below. You may listen to the first part by clicking on the "listen" above; the second part of the conversation can be listened to right here:
KC:
Let's begin with you, John, just give everybody a little bit of context for the Downtown Las Cruces Partnership. What is it and who's involved?
John:
Sure. So I am President and CEO of the downtown Las Cruces partnership. Our mission and vision is to promote and bring foot traffic to the downtown districts that would be Main Street, the Mesquite Historic District, and support merchants there, nonprofits, agencies, museums, artists. To come down and spend some time with us and what I like to call the city's virtual living room.
KC:
I would like to talk about some changes that have happened downtown and that have obviously presented some challenges and the closure of Amador Live comes to mind. Tell us what the future is there and what's going on.
John:
So right now, the the city is looking for individuals or an individual to take over that space. It's such a great space and the person that was there before did a really good job. He launched during COVID and that was so difficult for him to recover from, but definitely that's an area that we're asking that once we have a new venture there that folks come out and support it and support it strongly because we need that space to be utilized. It's such a great space.
KC:
Liana, you know a little something about starting a business during the pandemic. Tell us about.
Liana:
Yes, I do. I had just been furloughed from my position in physical therapy and I was feeling a little bit lost during that time and I decided that, unlike everybody else, baking sourdough and banana bread, I decided to go back to my roots and I decided to start baking cookies. I was born and raised in New York and I worked at many different bakeries there, so I took a couple of recipes that I had learned while I was working in those bakeries, and I made them into my own and it took off. It became a thriving business. I sell New York style cookies at the downtown farmers market and online. I've shipped all over the country through special orders. I do private events. Actually, that's how I became connected with the Downtown Las Cruces Partnership is last year at their business to business event. I actually helped them with cookies and I helped cater. So that was my first solo interaction with the Downtown Las Cruces Partnership.
KC:
So as a business owner, what does the partnership mean for small businesses in Las Cruces?
Liana:
So I think, let's see, the best way to describe it is that the downtown Las Cruces partnership really does show its support for local businesses through many different avenues. I would say a big one is with social media, being able to repost, get the word out about these small businesses, including the ones at the farmers market, because a lot of those businesses, those businesses at the farmers market, I would say have become mainstay businesses in Las Cruces because I believe Mateo's started as a food truck and now they've branched out into many different locations, including one in downtown. Mia’s Coffee, also local business, started as a food truck, became a mainstay now in the downtown community. So I think it really does do a lot for the little ones out there. I wouldn't even call myself a small business owner. I'd call myself a micro business owner because we are a party of three who work. So it's been a great adventure, but I think the Downtown Las Cruces Partnership really does an amazing job of just supporting the local community businesses, especially in the downtown district.
KC:
And what, John, at this point, are the biggest challenges facing those businesses downtown?
John:
So we want to continue to support the businesses downtown with foot traffic. One of the things that I want to stress is the business owners, they are family, they’re friends, they're your neighbors, right? And sometimes it's really easy just to kind of click and buy something off of Amazon, but you know, just taking a short drive, going downtown and supporting the folks downtown, it's so, so important. And you know, one of the other things that we do as an organization for the Downtown Las Cruces Partnership is also run some interface with with the city. So, if merchants have questions about permits or tax credits or say they want to expand and they don't know who to go to within the city. And they've been super supportive, but we interface and we help them out and guide them in the right direction.
KC:
Well, we'll pause this portion of our conversation and I want to pick up with some of those challenges of working with the different levels of New Mexico government from the city to the state, and what the climate is of what we've heard referred to as, you know, business friendliness in New Mexico. So we'll get back to that next hour here on KRWG public media.
