City offers more $10K grants to rail-affected businesses
A new round of city-subsidized relief is being offered to eligible businesses impacted by construction of the more than $10-billion Skyline rail project’s Dillingham Boulevard corridor, Honolulu officials say. The city’s Transit Construction Mitigation Fund, or TCMF, grant online portal is now open and accepting applications for 40 individual grants totaling $10,000 each, the city said. The city will provide grants to applying businesses located from 2312 and 2339 Kamehameha Highway, near Marukai Hawaii in Kalihi, down Dillingham Boulevard, to the North King Street intersection in Iwilei, the city said. For the current fiscal year, TCMF grants of $10,000 per applicant will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to available funding, the city said. Grant applications must be submitted by 4 p.m. Nov. 6. For those interested in applying for a grant, including eligibility requirements and the TCMF application process, visit revitalizeoahu.org/tcmf-info. The application portal will also allow applicants to translate the application into multiple languages, the city said. “These past few years have been especially tough for businesses that remained committed to operating along Dillingham Boulevard,” Mayor Rick Blangiardi said in a statement. “This grant program is about doing right by those entrepreneurs — helping them stay afloat, stay open, and stay part of our growing community. If you are eligible, please apply.” The city’s TCMF ordinance, as amended, includes the key eligibility requirements for small businesses. The business must: >> Be majority owned by city residents. >> Be a business that services customers primarily at the business’s physical location, which is a permanent building, structure or unit, within block of active rail construction for Skyline — currently the Dillingham Boulevard construction corridor. >> Generate $1 million or less in annual revenue. >> Have been opened for business at least 12 months prior to the start of any rail project construction within the transit construction mitigation zone. “Per, the city’s administrative rules businesses must also meet the 10% revenue decline requirement,” Scott Humber, the mayor’s communications director, told the Honolulu Star- Advertiser. He noted monies to pay for these grants were earmarked by the Honolulu City Council for the current fiscal year, which began July 1. “The City Council appropriated $450,000 for FY26,” Humber said. “The funding for the (TCMF) is from the city’s general fund.” Originally signed into law by Blangiardi in 2024, this grant funding program — established under 2023 measure, Bill 40 — has awarded only a few grants out of the dozens of applications received by the city thus far, city officials assert. The last time TCMF grants were awarded was earlier this year. “Five awards of $10,000 have been paid,” Ryan Wilson, a city spokesperson, previously told the Star- Advertiser. Wilson noted the city had received 34 applications submitted by local businesses. Of those, 15 applications were deemed ineligible. And 19 applications were returned for revision. The total dollar amount spent on this program so far includes $50,000 for the five $10,000 awards; $13,585 for the program’s one-year payment toward its information management system; and $967.94 to publish legal notices regarding administrative rules hearings on this city-run program, the city said. But modifications to the city’s financial relief program for small businesses negatively affected by rail construction to Kaka-ako also occurred earlier this year. In March, Council members Radiant Cordero and Tyler Dos Santos-Tam offered new legislation to revamp the ailing program. By June 4, the Honolulu City Council voted unanimously to pass Bill 31, which increases the maximum allowed annual revenue for affected small businesses to $1 million, up from $750,000, under the TCMF program. Bill 31, as adopted, removed the program’s number of employees limit, previously locked at 15 or fewer workers; and require the applicant business to have opened at least 12 months prior to the start of any rail project construction within the transit construction mitigation zone in which the business is physically located, as determined by the city Department of Budget and Fiscal Services director. Previously, a grant applicant’s business had to be open for business at their current physical location before Jan. 1, 2022. Andrew Min, of family--owned Min Plastics & Supply Inc. at 921 Kaamahu Place in Iwilei, said his business did not apply to the city’s grant program for a number of reasons — among them, the 75-year-old company’s proximity to the rail line’s route on nearby Dillingham Boulevard. “I think we are on the opposite side of the street,” Min told the Star-Advertiser previously. “So the grant covers the area adjacent to Dillingham, like one block off, so we’re on the part that’s not covered.” He also noted his family’s company also generates more than $1 million in revenue each year. Still, Min said rail construction along nearby Dillingham Boulevard does impact his family’s company. “It’s definitely increased the frustration with customers coming in and out because access coming in, they have to go around through Costco, turn around and come back,” he said previously, adding access to the company’s street address can only be gained via Dillingham. “And only from the eastbound direction because there’s no left turn in the westbound direction.” Min said the city could think about using budgeted funds to redo the routing of traffic along Dillingham Boulevard “to allow better access.”