City Council is handing out masks and social-distancing signs to help business owners open

Members of the Philadelphia City Council and the city’s Department of Commerce are hoping to donate thousands of masks, bottles of sanitizer, social-distancing signs, and other supplies to neighborhood businesses to help them reopen safely.

On Saturday, councilmembers and other city staffers met at the Convention Center to assemble about 10,000 kits with PPE supplies, then distributed them to almost 50 neighborhood community development corporations. Those CDCs will deliver the kits to neighborhood businesses in the days to come, according to a statement from Council.

“We all want to see our neighborhood small businesses re-open safely,” Council President Darrell L. Clarke said in a statement. “Part of that is making sure these businesses have the necessary PPE supplies to re-open safely and reassure their customers as well.”

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The PPE kits include reusable masks, bottles of hand sanitizer, “Reopen with Care” floor decals to encourage people to stay six feet apart in stores, and posters about safe reopenings. All PPE materials in the kits were obtained from local, minority, or women-owned businesses, the statement said. The $325,000 for the kits came from Council’s budget, a spokesperson said.

The idea for the project, which was done in partnership with the Department of Commerce, came from North Broad Renaissance’s “Reopened with Care” campaign, which began earlier this summer to help businesses on commercial corridors reopen safely.

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Local businesses are asked to request kits through their local CDC, business improvement district, or other neighborhood group.