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Effort Aids Businesses Devastated by Katrina

New York Lawyer
December 15, 2006

By Thomas Adcock>
New York Law Journal

Three lawyers who knew one another only slightly a year ago are set to clear the final hurdles in their efforts to secure $100 million for mom-and-pop business owners in New Orleans who were victims of Hurricane Katrina.

For the three new colleagues - Kevin J. Curnin, special counsel at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan; David Goldberg, associate general counsel of Citigroup; and Tricia Jefferson, staff attorney at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in Washington, D.C. - the efforts began last January by walking up and down the commercial streets of New Orleans and taking a roll-call of the few shops open for business, such as it was. They noted which stores were total losses and the whereabouts of their devastated owners.

Mr. Curnin, who made his bones as a pro bono innovator in the wake of the terrorist attacks on lower Manhattan, led the charge in New Orleans, calling up his experience in creating the nonprofit "From the Ground Up" for small business victims of 9/11. That effort won funds totaling about $700 million in federal Community Development Bloc Grants for New York City small-business owners.

This time, New Orleans shopkeepers desperately trying to rebuild their lives and enterprises - many having sold or mortgaged their homes to stay afloat, many more having taken second jobs, too many having racked up credit card debt - are set to become the beneficiaries of the nonprofit "Second Wind."

Today, the Louisiana state legislature in Baton Rouge is expected to greenlight Second Wind's aim to distribute grants of up to $20,000 each to some 5,000 financially strapped small businesses. The action would endorse yesterday's approval of the plan by the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

Mr. Curnin said those eligible for grants must have been in business prior to Hurricane Katrina, with gross annual revenues of less than $500,000 and a payroll of less than 25 employees. This segment of the New Orleans economy, said Mr. Curnin, is far and away the largest.

Next week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington is likewise expected to give its blessings to what Mr. Curnin says is a pilot project whose success will have him returning to lawmakers for more funds to help more small businesses in New Orleans.

"Empty storefronts send a signal that things are headed in the wrong direction," said Mr. Curnin, director of Stroock's Public Service Program. "On any given block, we'd see an open storefront, two or three empties, a blacked-out shop. You need to preserve those businesses before you lose the entire block. They're little pockets of hope, signals that nobody should give up."

Because the local bar was itself decimated by the August 2005 hurricane - with many New Orleans attorneys scattered throughout the country after losing their homes as well as their offices - the northern lawyers served a pressing need. Even so, it sometimes proved difficult to persuade dispirited entrepreneurs, no doubt suspicious of the legion of scammers that had descended on New Orleans, that Yankee lawyers were there to work on their behalf - for free.

An early survey trip to New Orleans with Mr. Curnin was "a learning experience on several levels," recollected Mr. Goldberg, who had never before visited the city.

"Introducing ourselves to local small business owners as a couple of New York lawyers was probably not the best tactic," said Mr. Goldberg, a member of the steering committee of Citigroup's Pro Bono Initiative. "People were expecting us to say, 'Now this is what the bill is going to be,' or figured we were interested in angling for a piece of some big class action suit.

"But then it became more conversational," Mr. Goldberg added. "We just talked about what people were experiencing."

Concept Takes Hold

The first meeting of Second Wind, an appellation coined by Mr. Curnin, brought together 10 mom-and-poppers who mainly showed up for a free buffet, according to Ms. Jefferson. At latest count, Second Wind membership stands in excess of 1,000 New Orleans shopkeepers.

"Slowly, our concept took hold," said Ms. Jefferson, who counts six trips to New Orleans this year, as do Messrs. Curnin and Goldberg. "People were wondering about our intentions, what we stood to get out of the deal. We just stuck to our one point, our one objective - to get these people grant relief. As the months progressed, they realized that their government wasn't going to do anything for them unless they worked collectively and collaboratively."

She added, "We just kept saying that the housing need was paramount, of course. But that you had to have a companion effort to help small businesses in order to save neighborhoods."

'Pretty Smart Women'

Among those who came for the free buffet offered at the maiden assembly of Second Wind was Laura Drumm, owner of the Tobasco Country Store in New Orleans' historic French Quarter.

"We're pretty smart women down here, but we don't necessarily know how to lobby for an issue and how to navigate the political scene," Ms. Drumm said in a phone interview.

With reference to Mr. Curnin, she added, "Kevin came down here and saw there was no one to step in for us. I didn't understand that what we needed involved our having to get together as one and fight. By God, Kevin is passionate - and his passion is contagious."

As president of Second Wind, Ms. Drumm stood next to Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco last week during a press conference in Baton Rouge held by the Recovery Authority to announce the $100 million grant program.

When the governor grabbed her hand, said Ms. Drumm, "I started tearing up and I thought, 'Oh my God, this is so corny.' But it just touches me so emotionally. At a time when a lot of the country turned their backs on us, New York gets us."

Marianne Lewis, who has managed to reopen Violet's, one of her three women's clothing boutiques in and nearby the French Quarter, was another early signatory to Second Wind.

"We wanted at least one shop opened again, maybe not because somebody needed a dress but because we had employees and because we wanted to show the city we were determined," Ms. Lewis said in a phone interview. "My business partner - my mother - read about Second Wind in an ad that Kevin put in the newspaper, and she dragged me to the meeting. I was immediately impressed with Kevin and David [Goldberg] and Tricia [Jefferson]."

So impressed that Ms. Lewis lobbied her fiercest competitor in the local frock trade to participate in Second Wind.

"He told me to get out of his shop," recollected Ms. Lewis. "I said to him, 'God bless, two years from now we're both here and can compete against each other. But that's not where we are right now. I'm not an island, you're not an island. Unless we stand together, we'll have no chance of getting fair treatment. He still told me to get out, and I left."

The rival dress dealer later showed up at a Second Wind meeting, signed on, then button-holed Ms. Lewis. "He said, 'I have to apologize,'" said Ms. Lewis. "He said, 'I was such a jerk.'"

She added, "People are jumping up all over the place taking credit for this. I don't care what politician wants to take credit. None of it would have happened without our lawyers."