Community Redevelopment Agencies
The Ai Adoption Catalyst Program
A done-for-you programme that helps 20 to 50 small businesses in a redevelopment district actually put Ai to work — not just learn about it. Digital Lab Miami runs the workshops, then sits down with each owner one to one until something is live and running in their business.
Why this fits what a CRA already does
Redevelopment agencies are funded through tax increment financing: as property values rise inside a district, the increase is captured in a Redevelopment Trust Fund and must be spent inside that district. Historically that has meant streetscapes, façade grants and building work.
Direct business investment counts too, and increasingly does — because a more competitive, higher-revenue small business is itself a redevelopment outcome: higher assessed values, retained jobs, fewer empty storefronts. Comparable Miami-area grant programmes have already named equipment and technology as board-approved uses.
The businesses inside these districts are the ones most locked out of Ai. They are time-poor and under-resourced, and most owners who have not adopted it have not weighed it up and declined — they simply believe it does not apply to their kind of business. This programme removes the three things standing in the way: the time, the expertise, and the first implementation.
The programme at a glance
Businesses served
20 to 50 per cohort, sized to the district and budget tier.
Duration
16 weeks of workshops, with one-to-one work continuing on a rolling basis through month six.
Programme fee
$95,000 to $165,000 per cohort, scaled to enrolment.
Cost per business
About $3,300 to $4,750 — well under the $10,000 cap seen in comparable local technology grants.
Who pays
The CRA funds it directly as a contracted service, not a pass-through to individual businesses.
The outcome that counts
Every enrolled business leaves with at least one working Ai tool in daily use.
How a cohort runs
Five phases, pairing scheduled group teaching with individual hands-on work, so that every business finishes with something running rather than a certificate.
- Weeks 1–2
- Recruitment and intake. Joint outreach with the CRA, enrolment, and a short readiness assessment covering current tools, the biggest time drains, and how comfortable the owner is.
- Weeks 3–6
- Foundations workshops. Weekly group sessions on what Ai can and cannot do, data and privacy basics, and a guided tour of the tools that suit each type of business.
- Weeks 7–12
- Guided build sessions. Small groups build their first automation live — a booking assistant, a review-response routine, a content pipeline — with office hours for when it goes wrong.
- Weeks 6–16
- One-to-one implementation. Dedicated time with a senior consultant to connect and test the chosen tool inside the real business. This is the phase that turns training into daily use, and it happens on site by default.
- Weeks 14–16
- Measurement and handoff. Each owner gets a one-page summary of what they adopted and what it saved; the CRA board gets a cohort impact report written to drop straight into its annual report to the state.
Group sessions run at a venue the CRA already has inside the district — a community centre, library room, or small-business resource centre — which keeps venue cost out of the budget and gives the agency a visible presence for the programme.
What the board can report
An agency has to show its board, and the state, that trust fund money produced something measurable. The programme is built to answer that directly.
Adoption
Businesses enrolled against businesses with a tool live in production by the end. Target: 90% or better.
Time and cost
Hours saved per week and the estimated value, gathered from owners and aggregated for the cohort.
Business health
Retention in the district, any reported revenue or booking lift, and how many opt into paid support afterwards.
Reach
Breakdown by demographic and business type, to support the agency's community-impact narrative.
After a cohort ends, businesses keep full ownership of every tool, account and workflow set up during the programme. The agency is not funding a dependency — it is funding a capability the business keeps.
Next steps
It starts with a thirty-minute conversation to confirm district fit, cohort size and budget tier. From there we localise this plan to the district — its name, its business mix, and any grant programmes it should sit alongside — and take it to the board, aiming for a cohort launch within one budget cycle.
This document is a planning and proposal tool intended to open a conversation with individual agencies. It is not a response to any posted solicitation, and the budget figures are planning estimates to be finalised with each partner agency.