John E. Harmon Sr., founder, president, and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey, recently penned a genuinely personal op-ed describing his ongoing fight to build a workforce and entrepreneurship hub in his own hometown of Trenton, a story that captures both the real momentum building around Black owned business growth across New Jersey right now and the persistent structural obstacles still standing in its way.
Harmon has spent nearly three decades working to expand economic opportunity for Black entrepreneurs and small business owners, beginning with the Metropolitan Trenton African American Chamber of Commerce in 1997 before founding AACCNJ statewide in 2007. Throughout that career, Harmon has identified a consistent obstacle facing Black owned businesses specifically, not a shortage of talent or ambition, but genuine barriers to accessing capital, relationships, decision makers, and information, barriers he argues are made considerably worse in Trenton by a small circle of gatekeepers that too often makes real collaboration difficult.
That concern sits at the heart of Harmon’s latest fight. In August 2025, AACCNJ purchased a 27,000-square-foot building in Trenton formerly occupied by Thomas Edison State University, envisioning it as a Transformation Center bringing workforce development, entrepreneurship, higher education, and economic opportunity together under one roof. The plan called for job readiness training, career counseling, and skilled trades instruction spanning carpentry, plumbing, HVAC, electrical work, and welding, alongside business incubator space for aspiring entrepreneurs and a partnership with Rowan University to deliver certification programs, virtual reality training, and online education. Before ever taking possession of the building, Harmon and his team met with city officials, Mercer County leaders, corporate partners, and state agencies, describing the response at the time as overwhelmingly positive, with the mayor of Trenton, representatives from Mercer County, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development, and academic leaders from both The College of New Jersey and Rowan University all attending an early public showcase of the project.
That early enthusiasm gave way to real disappointment. Despite AACCNJ’s federal and state nonprofit status, the city denied the organization’s application for a property tax exemption, a decision Harmon notes echoes a similar denial the chamber faced after purchasing a different Trenton property back in 2013. AACCNJ has since paid roughly $90,000 in property taxes on the Transformation Center building, faces an additional assessment of approximately $60,000 by the end of this year, and has invested more than $15,000 in permits alone while preparing for renovations. Harmon has framed the dispute as considerably bigger than a single tax disagreement, describing a broader pattern he says many investors and nonprofit leaders quietly discuss, organizations willing to commit real financial resources and expertise to Trenton repeatedly running into obstacles that erode confidence and discourage continued investment in the city. Harmon has stated that AACCNJ will formally appeal the city’s decision, while emphasizing that the organization’s commitment to Trenton extends well beyond this single building or decision.
Harmon’s Trenton fight unfolds against a backdrop of genuinely significant statewide momentum for Black owned businesses across New Jersey right now. Advocates including Harmon have continued pressing Governor Mikie Sherrill’s administration to meaningfully increase the historically low share of state procurement contracts awarded to Black owned enterprises, a figure that has hovered near just one percent for years despite campaign commitments to address the gap. Governor Sherrill has taken separate, complementary action on the broader small business front as well, signing a bipartisan bill that dramatically reduces business formation and filing fees statewide, cutting down on the upfront costs and administrative friction that have historically made it harder for emerging entrepreneurs to get a new business off the ground in the first place.
Beyond state policy, AACCNJ has also positioned itself directly around one of the largest economic opportunities New Jersey has seen in years, the 2026 FIFA World Cup matches at MetLife Stadium, projected to generate an estimated $3.3 billion in regional economic impact. The chamber has been actively guiding local small and mid-sized Black owned businesses in hospitality, logistics, and event staging on how to register through the official New York New Jersey Host Committee portal, aiming to ensure Black owned firms capture a genuine share of that global procurement activity rather than watching the opportunity pass by their own communities.
That statewide push extends into direct, on the ground programming as well. The African American Chamber of Commerce of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware is currently running its 2026 Region-Wide Economic Outlook Tour, a tri-state effort focused on helping entrepreneurs secure immediate access to capital, build corporate partnerships, and land larger commercial contracts, with a stop scheduled in Camden on July 23, 2026. Media platforms covering the Black business community statewide, including NJ Urban News, have simultaneously been highlighting the tangible results of that broader momentum, spotlighting expanding Black owned operations ranging from specialized wellness studios like PilatesBae in Maplewood to cultural staples like Backspin Records in Middlesex.
Taken together, Harmon’s Trenton story and the broader statewide push around procurement contracts, World Cup opportunities, and reduced business formation costs reflect two sides of the same underlying challenge he has spent nearly thirty years working to address. Real economic momentum exists right now for Black owned businesses across New Jersey, but as Harmon’s own experience with the Transformation Center makes clear, that momentum still runs directly into local obstacles capable of testing even the most committed, well resourced organizations. As Harmon put it in describing what Trenton’s future genuinely depends on, the path forward requires replacing control with collaboration, skepticism with trust, and missed opportunities with genuine partnership, a standard he continues holding not just for his own hometown, but for the broader statewide effort to expand economic opportunity he has spent his entire career building.
