Suazo Business Center launches in Ogden to help Latino, minority entrepreneurs
Silvia Castro, center, head of the Suazo Business Center, speaks with others at the opening of the entity's new office in Ogden on Wednesday, May 19, 2021. Suazo, based in Salt Lake City, aids Latino and other minority entrepreneurs looking to start businesses. The Ogden office is located inside the offices of the City of Ogden's Business Information Center.
Ogden City Councilperson Luis Lopez speaks at the opening of the new Suazo Business Center office in Ogden on Wednesday, May 19, 2021. Silvia Castro, left, the Suazo Business Center director, looks on. Suazo, based in Salt Lake City, aids Latino and other minority entrepreneurs looking to start businesses. The new Ogden office is located inside the offices of the City of Ogden's Business Information Center.
Silvia Castro, head of the Suazo Business Center, speaks at the opening of the entity's new office in Ogden on Wednesday, May 19, 2021. Suazo, based in Salt Lake City, aids Latino and other minority entrepreneurs looking to start businesses. The Ogden office is located inside the offices of the City of Ogden's Business Information Center.
OGDEN — The desire is out there — would-be entrepreneurs in the Latino community are hankering for an opportunity to make a go of it.
“I think there’s a lot of people who want to start up a business but they don’t know they can,” said Silvia Castro, who heads up the Salt Lake City-based Suazo Business Center, designed to aid Latinos looking to start or grow a business.
There are resources to help, though, and now Ogden and Weber County will be getting a big one. Suazo has opened a satellite location in Ogden, partnering with Ogden City’s Business Information Center. Suazo reps, city leaders and others gathered Wednesday to formally launch the effort.
“A third of our community is Hispanic,” said Ogden City Councilperson Luis Lopez, on hand Wednesday, alluding to the sizable Latino population in Ogden, about 32% of the total. “This has been a long time in the making, long-time overdue.”
As Castro sees it, helping foster business growth among Latinos and other minority groups helps them and has the greater good of bolstering the overall Utah economy. Suazo launched in 2002 and she said it has so far helped more than 10,000 clients, small-business operators and others.
Investing in everybody in the community, including those who may not stand front and center, has the greater good of improving things for everybody, Castro said. Among other things, Suazo, with a staff that speaks Spanish and English, helps entrepreneurs navigate and understand the complexities of running a business, including the intricacies of dealing with government bureaucracy. Such services can make a big difference for immigrant business operators, those with limited experience with the U.S. system.
In a statement announcing the Ogden plans, Suazo further noted that white, non-Hispanic households in Utah typically earn 30% more income than their Hispanic counterparts. The disparity is larger for Black households. Business ownership, Castro said, “is a vehicle that can effectively curb the income gap for underserved communities in our state.”
Suazo already has forged a relationship with Weber State University. The nonprofit entity will help recruit Latino entrepreneurs to tap into the university’s Wildcat MicroFund, formed to help those with an idea turn their proposal into a business. Now per Wednesday’s announcement, Suazo will take things a step further, working directly with those in the area’s underserved community — Latinos, African-Americans, other people of color, women, low-income people — who want to start or expand a business.
Two Suazo staffers will work out of Ogden, backed by the larger Salt Lake City operation, and Castro foresees efforts to reach out directly to the public. Having bilingual staffers will aid in efforts to assist immigrants from Mexico and the rest of Latin America. “We’re going to go grassroots. We’re going to go out to the community,” Castro said.
Leon Araujo, originally from Mexico and now the owner of Coffee Links Coffee House in Ogden, received help from Suazo in 2015 as he was trying to grow his business, located at 287 Park Blvd. Now he’ll serve Suazo as an advisor, assisting others getting their businesses going.
As he sees it, one of the good things with Suazo coming to Ogden is that it will have a fixed, formal presence here. Various chambers of commerce geared to Latino business operators have offered help in the past in Ogden, only to fade away.
“The most important thing is, we should be consistent,” Araujo said. That is, the good thing with Suazo is that it has a physical location in Ogden and it’s “open anytime they need.”
Castro noted that some from the Ogden area, like Araujo, have already tapped Suazo’s resources, but they’ve had to travel to its main Salt Lake City offices to get help. That Suazo will have a location in Ogden should result in bigger numbers of people here locally seeking help. “We had quite a bit from the area and that’s with them having to travel all the way to Salt Lake,” she said.
Suazo will operate within the offices of Ogden’s Business Information Center at 2036 Lincoln Ave., the city-run entity that aids with business development in the city. Sara Stoffers, the manager of the business center, envisions Suazo working directly with entrepreneurs. She and Business Information Center staffers can then help point them to potential financing and loan opportunities to get their operations going.
Suazo offers business education, workshops, mentoring and microloans. Castro said the group will use space at Weber State’s Community Education Center for training and educational offerings.