Kathy Castor: Shopping small this holiday season will help rebuild after back-to-back hurricanes

U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor is urging Tampa Bay area residents to shop small this holiday season, noting that doing so is a great way to help communities impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton recover from devastating back-to-back storms.

Speaking at a press conference in downtown St. Petersburg ahead of Thanksgiving and the Black Friday shopping extravaganza that follows it, Castor stressed the toll the storms took on small business communities in St. Pete, Tampa and along much of Florida’s west coast. Florida’s 14th Congressional District, which Castor represents, includes parts of St. Pete and Tampa.

She called the storms “unwelcome guests that showed up and trashed the place.”

“We’re resilient and we’re going to rebuild and we’re going to make sure that our small-business owners can survive this,” she said.

With Black Friday expanding both before and after the Friday following Thanksgiving that it originally occupied, and with Cyber Monday becoming more and more prevalent in the holiday shopping trend, Castor asked residents to remember that money spent local, stays local.

About 70 cents on every dollar spent at a local small business goes back into the local economy, according to LocalShops1, a Tampa Bay area small-business advocacy group. Meanwhile, only 40 cents per dollar spent at a national corporation stays within the local economy.

“When you support your small-business owners in this community, those dollars circulate. They’re spent at restaurants, they’re spent on buying other supplies. These are the dollars that are going to help us recover and rebuild,” Castor said.

“Don’t sit there online and order something from an online shop,” she added. “Get out and support your local small businesses.”

Castor stressed that while the government does play a role — the Small Business Administration has extended the deadline to apply for a small-business recovery loan until Jan. 7 — it’s the community that really matters.

Shopping local means small businesses can stay afloat while they await federal assistance through various federal, state or local programs. And it’s even more important because, as Castor noted, Congress has yet to provide funding to cover small-business loan applications that are coming in.

But she’s confident in the local small-business community’s ability to recover.

“I’m here today to say, a setback is a setup for a comeback,” Castor said.

And prior to the hurricanes, small business nationwide was well on its way to a record year, a sign that recovery is more than possible. She said there were 20 million new business applications across the nation, a record, and the SBA backed $56 billion in capital and loans for small businesses.

Joining Castor in urging local patronage, Tony Loeffler, co-owner of Atlas Body & Home in downtown St. Pete and a board member for the Downtown Business Association, said businesses were just starting to recover from previous challenges related to the COVID pandemic.

His shop opened in 2019, only to be faced the next year by a global pandemic and a historic economic slowdown. But optimism never wavered. He said when he and his husband first opened their shop they were told: “St. Pete is all about community over competition.”

“And that truly is accurate,” Loeffler said, beaming.

His shop served as a drop-off location for hurricane recovery supplies. With the help of neighboring businesses and a generous community, Loeffler said they collected about $25,000 worth of supplies to distribute.

“Every donation was more than just a dropped off bag of cleaning supplies, clothing and water,” he said. “It was a way to start rebuilding our community and restoring the spirit of St. Pete.”

Now, Loeffler and Castor said, it’s time for the community to step up again, by shopping locally and continuing the recovery process.