Cyndi Hermocillo-Legg used to be a small business owner, and she remembers what most of them think about a trip to their local City Hall.

“There are businesses all across the country that aren’t comfortable with city halls,” Hermocillo-Legg said. “They’re thinking this is going to involve licenses, permits and probably money.”

Hermocillo-Legg, though, hopes she’s helping some Lawrence business owners take a different view of Lawrence City Hall. Since late 2013, Hermocillo-Legg has been serving as the city’s first small business facilitator. She’s stationed in the city’s planning and development services department, and she works to get involved early with small businesses that are looking to locate or expand in Lawrence.

“What Cyndi is really good at is putting the technical terms and processes we use into lay terms that really make sense to a small business,” said Scott McCullough, the city’s director of planning and development services.

Hermocillo-Legg said her time as the owner of an authorized Sears dealer store has given her a good understanding of what business owners have on their minds when they come to City Hall.

“I can speak in terms of cash flow and timelines,” Hermocillo-Legg said. “I remember being on the other side of the table.”

The type of help Hermocillo-Legg can provide is varied. Often she helps businesses understand land use processes, such as rezoning or site plan approvals, needed before a business can open in a particular location. She also works frequently with businesses needing a building permit to renovate or expand their existing locations.

But during the early months of the position, Hermocillo-Legg also developed several general resource guides for any business to use and placed them on a new section of the city’s website. One guide is a 50-page document that provides items such as a business start-up check list, a listing of area organizations that provide grants and other assistance to small businesses, a listing of businesses resources available at the Lawrence Public Library and several other features.

She also has put together a small business construction guide and has hosted several “lunch and learn” seminars on various topics related to the development process in Lawrence.

Hermocillo-Legg said she’s increasingly spending more time one-on-one with businesses. Over the past week and a half, she said, she’s started 10 new case files for businesses in various stages of development.

She said that’s a part of the job she particularly enjoys. She spent five years as a vice president with the Greater Topeka Chamber of Commerce/GO Topeka economic development partnership. She said she decided to switch gears and work for the city because she believes helping create an efficient regulatory process for businesses can have a great impact.

“Lawrence is ripe to continue to grow small to medium size businesses,” Hermocillo-Legg said.

She said Kansas University’s presence, the city’s geographic location and several other factors make it attractive to small business start-ups. She said the city, chamber and other business organizations now are devoting more resources to helping those businesses get off the ground.

“Half the battle is knowing what is out there that can help you,” Hermocillo-Legg said. “I feel like we are helping build a culture of entrepreneurship here. That process can’t be exclusive to the city or the chamber or to KU. It has to be everyone working together to create the necessary parts.”