...as BIDs grow in size and scope, so do complaints about them. "They are cartels for landlords," said Moshe Adler, an adjunct professor of urban planning at Columbia University. "Make no mistake, BIDs may help small businesses when it suits them. But their fundamental role is advancing the interests of property owners."
Big BIDS are increasingly influential players at City Hall. Carl Weisbrod, the founding president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, the nation's largest BID, with $17 million in annual revenue, now heads the Department of City Planning. The Times Square Alliance was the driving force behind City Council legislation adopted earlier this year that corralled Elmo and other street performers into a designated corner of the pedestrian plaza. BIDs also lobbied the city to crack down on the fraudulent clothing- donation bins that once riddled streets and now are pressing to rein in street vendors.
Before the City Council approves a new BID, landlords must agree to perpetually fund the organization via assessments on their properties, typically a few hundred dollars per month depending on square footage and sidewalk frontage. Usually these expenses are passed on to commercial tenants through higher rents. By law, BID boards are controlled by landlords, which doesn't sit well with some business owners. "In a country that was founded by a revolution against taxation without representation, it's clear this is a huge issue," Alex Duffy, founder of a nonprofit theater in Brooklyn, said at a City Council hearing last year.
There is also evidence that BIDs hurt some retailers. A study published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research in 2014 showed that sales and employment at shops within New York City BIDs fared worse than at those outside the districts. The study's author, Stacey Sutton, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said it could be that BIDs help make neighborhoods more desirable, which attracts new shops and puts pressure on existing merchants to compete.
Yet BIDs continue to proliferate throughout the boroughs. Some 25 are currently being created or expanded, and the city plans to double the number of full-time staffers who oversee them. Mayor de Blasio lauded BIDs last February when he signed a bill expanding several of them. "It will mean more and better services locally, clean and inviting streets, initiatives that help our small businesses to attract more customers," he said.
12 comments:
BIDS are extortion and nothing else....
Name one BID outside of Manhattan that is successful. Really successful.
How long has the Flushing BID been operating?
How good a job do you think they've done in view of the filthy overcrowded streets that persist?
Bingo!
There are 3 big groups that are operating simultaneously in the downtown hub.
1.
The BID
2.
Flushing Chamber of Commerce
3.
One Flushing
What is your opinion on the effectiveness of these organizations in improving Flushing?
A better plan would be to create a pool of people looking for work, and pay them to keep the streets clean.
So the city can create a street cleaner position, at a low salary, 1-2 guys can maintain a retail strip with no problem.
But that concept is too easy. Even better, start aa collection, $3 dollars a day, per business to the willing participants keeping things swept, and garbage picked up. It worked in the old days.
Isn't there a North Flushing Chamber too?
Just another shakedown of legitimate businesses, regulations and fees from unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, and money laundering scheme...
A North Flushing Chamber?
I doubt it.
A north Flushing chamber pot, maybe Don Petrocelli runs 162nd Street.
Would somebody please explain tous exactly what John Choe, former John Liu employee, and his "One Flushing" group does?
Isn't he the Commie that wants to unite north and South Korea?
Maybe he wants to start by uniting Flushing.
LMAO!
Another case where something initially created to improve the environment and the economic landscape has been exploited and abused by opportunistic scum.
The biggest joke is the BID in Jamaica. Disorganized and oblivious to the conditions and the citizens around them.
BIDs are always formed in devastated areas to boost the property owners' values.
Times Square went down the crapper.
Solution....a BID. Now Hell's Kitchen has become a high rent district.
Gays are flooding in from Chelsea, their former home.
Rents have skyrocketed too high in Chelsea.
WHERE THE FUCK HAS COUNCILMAN PETER KOO BEEN ALL THESE YEARS CONCERNING ALL OF THE FLUSHING FILTH?
His recent 11th hour photo ops cleaning up Flushing are too little, too late.
The only way to clean up Flushng is to clean up its politics. From its community board to its Congress member.....
a good strong douche is needed.
The FBI needs to scope Chuck Apelian. He can tell them all a lot.
Are you listening, Preet? Flushing is very fertile ground for uncovering major corruption.
Forget about its phony BID.
So they string up some holiday street lights. The impassable streets still smell like sour shit!
Padavan wrote the BOD law
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