Some two dozen business owners and community members attended a town hall Thursday night to air their concerns to city leaders about how — or whether — small businesses are represented in Maricopa.

City Councilman Vincent Manfredi said he hosted the event with Mayor Nancy Smith and City Manager Ben Bitter after hearing such concerns from local business owners.

“I’ve heard from the community that businesses believe the city is not doing enough to help them,” he said. “I want to hear what they believe the city could be doing.”

And hear they did.

The scheduled one-hour session ran at least twice that long with local business owners voicing feelings of being ignored or undervalued in favor of big-box stores and corporations.

Some of those concerns? Feeling the city lacked effective communication, resources and direction for small businesses, plus an inadequate number of affordable options to establish a business in the city.

That was the case for Chris Cahall, an American Family Insurance agent in Maricopa of more than 14 years.

“What’s stagnating my growth is I’d really like to own my own space,” he said during the town hall. “Even if I joined with a group of other business owners to try and build something, I would be working for the building. It’s unaffordable and unattainable to a small business owner.”

At least four other business owners stated that they would be forced to relocate their business to Casa Grande or Chandler if they wanted to expand — or even simply find an office outside of their home.

One example was Roots Eatery, which is mulling an expansion into a larger location. However, owner Chris Spear said during the meeting that finding affordable space in the city is nothing short of difficult.

“Roots wants to grow, wants to expand, but I can’t get in touch with anyone about [the old] Pizza Hut location,” he said.

(The Pizza Hut on John Wayne Parkway is amid a downsize, leaving an attractive storefront vacant at the Maricopa Market.)

“That’s a great new spot … but right now we’re looking outside the city limits, like Casa Grande and other places,” Spear said.

Despite the complaints, city officials said they felt the town hall led to some good ideas for changes that can benefit small businesses over the next few months.

“Many [suggestions] were ‘low hanging fruit,’ which we should be able to act on soon and many were more challenging,” said Mayor Smith, “but I feel with great communication, together we can make change happen.”

Manfredi said the next steps were to compile information from the brainstorming session, then figure out what changes could happen to “make sure that the business community is healthy and vibrant in the city of Maricopa.”

Vincent Manfredi is an owner of InMaricopa.