When the first Covid-19 death in the United States was reported at Evergreen Health on February 29, 2020, the City of Kirkland became the national epicenter of the pandemic, and its businesses were among the first in the country to be affected by the crisis. And Kirkland emerged as a leader in innovating ways to support and help local entrepreneurs outlast it.

By year’s end, the city’s Covid-19 Economic Development & Small Business Relief program had distributed more than $1 million, a third of Kirkland’s CARES Act funding, to 207 small businesses and nonprofits. To augment the stopgap funding with long-term support, the city also created an online marketplace that connects Kirkland businesses with local customers.

“I had an ‘aha!’ moment,” says Assistant City Manager Jim Lopez, who says the idea came to him while brainstorming with Washington’s small-business liaison team. “Local governments are already acquainted with digital business registries. Our concept was to take that familiar idea and to enhance it.”

Recognizing that 80 percent of consumers shop online—a habit only heightened by the pandemic and statewide Stay Home, Stay Healthy orders—and that many brick-and-mortar shops lack the ability to conduct business online, in November the City of Kirkland launched ShopLocalKirkland.com, a city-maintained website that’s the digital equivalent of a main street with storefronts run by local businesses. Businesses that register with the service receive a complimentary digital storefront and can indicate multiple point-of-sale options to connect to consumers and transact online.

“We don’t engage in any ecommerce,” Lopez says. “We’re simply a pass- through entity. Once people discover the businesses, we aren’t needed anymore. And that’s OK.”

“Once people discover the businesses, we aren’t needed anymore. And that’s ok.”

By the end of December, 441 businesses had registered and 223 had operational digital storefronts; the website had tallied 40,000 hits, generating 1,794 local business leads. To increase momentum, the city also developed a social media tool kit for registered businesses and adapted the tool kit provided by the King County Executive Office, with themes such as Take-Out Tuesday and Workout Wednesday. Once the platform was established, the city began to augment it with new features and programs, including Kirkland In-Car Dining, a webpage on the site listing the linked online menus of restaurants that deliver to city’s Marina Park, where a lakeside parking lot has been converted into a socially distanced cyber drive-in with a view.

Noting that Kirkland modeled its program after BuyLocalAuburn.com, Lopez says other cities can replicate its success, so long as they have a digital strategy, a marketing plan, and buy-in with key stakeholders, like the chamber of commerce and its constituents. And as for Kirkland’s dubious place in history as America’s Covid-19 ground zero, notes Councilmember Amy Falcone, there is at least one silver lining.

“We’re going to come out of this pandemic with a stronger community,” she says. “That’s going to last, I hope, forever.”

By Emily Alhadefe