Mayor Lori Lightfoot speaks during an event in Bronzeville Monday to announce the 26 finalists to receive $33.5 million in combined Community Development Grants. [Don Vincent/The Daily Line]

More than two-dozen small businesses around the city will get a piece of a $33.5 million chunk of new public money devoted to capital projects, city leaders announced on Monday. The first round of finalists in the city’s “Community Development Grants” program represents an expansion of the city’s business grant programming enabled by $660 million in capital bonds the city issued last year to supplement the $1.9 billion the city received from the American Rescue Plan Act.