KRVC receives city grant to boost small businesses in greater Riverdale

The Kingsbridge-Riverdale-Van Cortlandt Development Corporation, or KRVC, received a New York City Small Business Services grant to strengthen a local merchants association.

The $100,000 award will help bolster KRVC’s Bailey Avenue Merchants and Broadway West 238th Street Alliance, known as BAMBA, expanding its reach and establishing a more permanent presence. Nonprofit KRVC, which has worked to improve the northwest Bronx for more than 40 years, is the only organization in the Bronx to receive a Fiscal Year 2027 Merchant Organizing Grant from small business services.

The award is part of a broader $1.5 million investment the city’s small business services announced for 15 Bronx organizations, supporting roughly 3,000 small businesses across the borough, said the agency’s commissioner, Kenny Minaya.

“These grants will fund merchant organizing, BID development, corridor improvements and help support small businesses across the Bronx,” Minaya said at a press conference. “This is the kind of on-the-ground work that keeps our commercial corridors safe, vibrant and welcoming.”

BAMBA was first formed in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic as the Bailey Avenue Merchants Business Alliance, when KRVC worked with a small group of merchants along the Bailey Avenue corridor, said KRVC executive director Laura Levine-Pinedo. The later alliance expanded to include nearly 30 businesses and held its first BAMBA Fest last year.

“Each corridor has its own set of issues,” Levine-Pinedo said. “So we really applied to expand on these specific issues that each corridor faces, and also the goal of this year is to incorporate BAMBA into its own entity.”

Those issues vary block by block, she said. Bailey Avenue is still recovering from a massive fire, while businesses along Broadway and West 242nd Street are facing ongoing MTA construction that many owners say is driving customers away.

The grant is also intended to help merchants build a more permanent association. Norman Martinez, a BAMBA board member and owner of Home BX Steakhouse, at 224 W. 238th St., said the network has connected business owners who previously worked largely in isolation, giving them a stronger voice, easier access to resources and a chance to connect with each other.

The city’s grant guidelines call for projects that help merchants build relationships, collectively address neighborhood issues and develop the capacity to continue commercial revitalization efforts beyond the grant period.

Levine-Pinedo said the funding will allow the group to spruce up the corridors, launch another BAMBA Fest and fund marketing efforts like business spotlights, videos and podcast appearances meant to bring customers through merchants’ doors.

KRVC also plans to use the funding to create a digital and physical small-business directory so residents can find and support businesses, particularly those along Broadway and West 242nd Street that are partially obscured by construction.

Revitalization through murals is a common thread in KRVC’s work across the area, Levine-Pinedo said, including several already completed in BAMBA’s corridors. This grant will help expand that work as well.

“Beautification is part of this,” Levine-Pinedo said. “We will be bringing another mural to the area down there, as we’ve done already.”

A Fiscal Year 2025 grant funded a two-piece mural — a butterfly and a “shop local” design — at Bailey Avenue and West 238th Street, KRVC’s ninth in the north Bronx. This upcoming mural will be its tenth.

That kind of visibility is something merchants say they can feel directly. For Jimmy Abbate, owner of Nice Guys Car Wash and a BAMBA member, it’s made a difference.

“Before Laura it was word of mouth, that was basically it, which is still huge,” Abbate, who has owned the car wash for 15 years said. “But she goes to the next level and she helps us promote what we do here and who we are.”

Levine-Pinedo first approached Abbate while visiting local businesses, part of an effort to understand what support owners needed. Since then, KRVC has helped promote Nice Guys through social media, podcasts, community events and other publicity.

The larger goal is to turn that individual support into a stronger network of businesses that can advocate together.

Martinez said that network is exactly what was missing before the alliance came together.

“Businesses here before — everything was, like, forgotten,” he said, adding since joining BAMBA, he has met other business owners he now considers close collaborators. “We can work together, basically, you know, and help each other. We’re a family, basically.”

He also said he has seen new customers coming in after discovering the restaurant through BAMBA. Last year’s inaugural BAMBA Fest, he said, brought new foot traffic to the area.

“It was incredible,” he said, adding that he hopes this year’s festival draws even more businesses to participate.

Looking ahead, Abbate said he wants the alliance to grow beyond its current roster to include every kind of business in the corridor — delis, restaurants, beauty salons, cleaners — so the neighborhood’s full commercial base can organize together.

“We really want people to know that they are there and to support them,” Levine-Pinedo said.