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Entrepreneurship for All Is Giving Longmont’s Latino Founders a Boost
The program is designed to help under-resourced business owners launch a company. Can it help close the prosperity gap in Longmont?Angela Ufheil •
In 2019, Longmont felt like a modern-day boomtown. Main Street brimmed with hip boutiques and eateries. J.M. Smucker Co., the jam company, opened a factory in July, bringing 200-plus well-paying jobs to the town, with an estimated 270 more anticipated in a future expansion. In November, the unemployment rate stood at 2.1 percent, lower even than Denver’s 2.3 percent.
But it wasn’t all sunshine and Uncrustables. Data from the Longmont Economic Development Partnership (LEDP) showed that in 2016 the town’s Hispanic and Latino residents, roughly a quarter of the population, were not sharing in the prosperity: 26.6 percent lived in poverty, well above the national level (10.5 percent) and that of Longmont’s white denizens (12.2 percent). “Unless we have all of the resources to support everyone within our community,” says LEDP president and CEO Jessica Erickson, “I don’t think we’ve been successful in our role of economic development.”