H.R. 3585 — Capacity Building for Business Districts Pilot Program Act of 2025

This section states seven congressional findings concerning the importance of business districts to community vitality, economic growth, and job creation; the role of locally based business district organizations in supporting small businesses; their limited access to Economic Development Administration (EDA) programs due to small scale; and the availability of intermediary organizations to deploy EDA funding for capacity building, technical assistance, training, and best practices.

This section establishes, within the Economic Development Administration's research and technical assistance grant program, the Capacity Building for Business Districts Pilot Program. The program authorizes competitive grants to specified recipients—nonprofits with multi-regional operations and expertise in business district revitalization—to provide technical assistance, capacity building, and related services to eligible subrecipients (i.e., nonprofit or public business district organizations) supporting revitalization of business districts (e.g., rural main streets or neighborhood commercial corridors) in low-income, rural, minority, and Native communities within distressed areas. Grants require multiple awards to multiple organizations, a minimum initial term of two years, annual reporting on metrics such as jobs created, subrecipients served, and fund uses, prioritization of applicants serving distressed areas (including rural communities and Indian tribes) with multi-state or multi-geographic capacity, broad geographic distribution, and administration outside regional offices.