My Main Street: Local Business Accelerator Program

The My Main Street Local Business Accelerator program focuses on creating and maintaining vibrant and inclusive local main streets while providing residents, new entrepreneurs, and existing businesses with economic opportunities in their main street community. PROGRAM CLOSED. 

As a My Main Street community, your community will be supported with the following:

• A My Main Street Ambassador is dedicated to providing wrap-around business support for both new and existing businesses
• A community market research profile to identify opportunities for new local businesses that entrepreneurs can explore and initiate with the support of business model and operating model templates.
• Customized market research reports for local businesses, at no cost, to assist businesses in understanding their customers and growing their business.
• Local businesses may apply to receive funding of up to $10,000 as a non-repayable contribution to support starting or growing their business based on the customized market research reports.
• Live and pre-recorded training videos for local businesses covering a range of topics from business planning to marketing, operational planning raising funds, and more.

Learn More About How My Main Street Supports St. Catharines' Businesses

Local Business Accelerator Program Pillars

• Customized Data, Market Research, and Analysis - My Main Street focuses on the impact of deep data analysis and market research into the main street community to understand demographics and market gaps, and to identify growth opportunities for new and existing businesses.
• Community Economic Development - My Main Street focuses on the principle that investing in local main streets should create and retain wealth in the community by ensuring residents benefit from the economic opportunities available along their main streets.
• Prioritizing Equity Seeking Groups - My Main Street seeks to prioritize equity-deserving groups and historically marginalized communities through all aspects of program delivery to encourage local economic opportunities to diversify local main streets.

Key Terms

Wrap-Around Business Supports - Main Street Ambassadors will work with business owners to identify and uncover strategic business opportunities that might be available to them through information identified in the Community Profile and individual Market Research reports. As part of the discovery of opportunities, Main Street Ambassadors can also connect business owners with community partners and service providers that can help them further address and implement the identified opportunities.

Non-Repayable Contribution - As part of the program new and existing businesses located in participating communities may apply to receive funding of up to $10,000 as a non-repayable contribution to support starting or growing their business based on the results of their customized market research report. There are ten, $10,000 non-repayable contributions per My Main Street community. Please contact your Main Street Ambassador for more information.

For full program overview visit My Main Street

Areas of Support

DOWNTOWN

MERRITTON