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Provincetown :: Saturday, May 17th 2008
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Provincetown is full of small businesses.
Hanging a Hat and Shingle in Provincetown
Information to Help You Make the Big Move
By Gerry Desautels
March 22nd, 2006
The arrival stories of numerous Provincetown business owners is a happy and familiar one—many of the town’s shopkeepers, restaurant owners, innkeepers, gallery owners, and entrepreneurs once lived somewhere else, admiring the serenity of Provincetown only from afar with a beguiled tourist’s gaze.
| Couples, single people, gays and straight folk—no one is exempt from the tug to relocate and start anew in this thriving and growing tourist-business community. |
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It’s no secret that the energetic and magnetic pull of the Outer Cape’s geographic "swirl" is a vortex that nurtures clarity, conviction and creativity in most who visit and the very lucky who eventually resolve to live and work here.
Yet in spite of the town’s small size, Provincetown today offers new and existing businesses all the services necessary to compete and succeed in today’s competitive business climate.
Provincetown’s powerful spell reaches many business people and professionals with the drive to change their "city ways" and live out their loftier life dreams by the sea. Couples, single people, gays and straight folk—no one is exempt from the tug to relocate and start anew in this thriving and growing tourist-business community.
Over one hundred and fifty years ago, industrious Portuguese fishing immigrants and Yankee sea captains built the town into one of the liveliest whaling and fishing ports along the East Coast. From that time, Provincetown has actually dwindled in the number of year-round residents and dying industries have been replaced by an increasingly eclectic group of professionals reflecting the twenty-first century with a profile oftentimes more cosmopolitan than small-town Cape Cod.
The population mix is truly cosmic—South Africans, Jamaicans, Canadians, Eastern Europeans, Mexicans, British, French, Australians and of course, Americans from all over the 50 states—making for a creative business and arts talent pool. The richness and diversity draws much talent and energy and value added, built-in services in which to conduct business.
Accountants, lawyers, house cleaners, hairdressers, architects, gym trainers, interior designers, life coaches, bureaucrats, insurance brokers, artists, mortgage brokers, healthcare workers, media pros, realtors—they’re all here, continuing to launch businesses, careers and new lives in Provincetown—a wonderfully comfortable and familiar place to hang your hat and a business shingle if you care to reinvent or reinvigorate the life you formerly knew elsewhere.
Where to start? Look no further--this website contains a comprehensive list of business support services at your disposal to start a new life, business or career on the Outer Cape. The listings in the Directory to the left will allow you to get started and perhaps even identify a missing service or business niche just waiting to be filled in town.
Need more sources? The Provincetown Chamber of Commerce and the Provincetown Business Guild are two reputable local business organizations providing endless networking possibilities with their 500-plus combined members. Both groups meet regularly at various locations around town. Members make up a healthy mix of year-round businesses and seasonal residents and business owners.
The Provincetown Public Library (networked with all town libraries on the Cape) stocks most reference material and archives useful to both residents and individuals in search of relevant business data.
Of course, the proliferation of the Internet has also done wonders in making information and commercial goods more accessible (from a healthy distance) here on the Outer Cape. Provincetown Town Hall data, tax information, regulations and policies are also available from the comfort of your home office at www.provincetowngov.org.
Just one block from Town Hall, the Provincetown Business Development Center offers consulting, technical training, equipment and resource services to existing small and budding business owners. Two competent, onsite consultants provide guidance to clients with business, financial, and marketing planning to get the smallest of businesses focused and running. The Center is located at the corner of 306 Commercial Street and Small’s Court. Center hours are Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For more information, call 508-487-5573.
Small business owners in need of a cash infusion to float a new business should consult with the Lower Cape Cod Community Development Corporation. Affiliated with the Business Development Center, the Corporation finances "micro" loans up to $25,000 and short-term loans up to $7,500 for existing and start-up businesses who cannot obtain financing through conventional lenders.
Businesses located in the Harwich to Provincetown area with five or fewer employees are eligible to apply for the Business Builders Program loan program. For further details, contact Norman Newell at 508-240-7873 ext. 25.
And finally, if you want to call Provincetown home, but must travel for business, that too is a possible lifestyle alternative. With regular daily flights from Provincetown Municipal Airport (and high-speed ferries to Boston during summer months) your next jaunt to a business meeting or your company headquarters is just a short flight or boat ride away. Be forewarned, your last flight in just may be the one-way ticket to a new way of life you only once imagined.
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