Business owners in two of Queens biggest commercial hubs are taking steps to clean up their neighborhood and spur business through the formation of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs).
Merchants in Flushing and Jamaica voted recently to approve the districts, which could mean increased sanitation, security and marketing programs in both areas.
While large national chains have flocked to both commercial centers in recent years, and continue to do so, impediments like lack of sanitation in Flushing and security in Jamaica have likely hurt business and limited the broad appeal of the areas.
For Flushing, the City Council was expected to approve the formation of a BID in late August, a decision which will then be passed on to Mayor Michael Bloomberg to sign. Bloomberg has been a big advocate of BIDs, signing a bill last year that allowed many BIDs to increase the amount they charge local businesses for their annual expenses. Bloomberg s support comes following years of effort by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to weaken BIDs, which he saw as abrogating his power, despite their role in the dramatic transformation of Times Square and other areas. As a result of Bloomberg s warm embrace, another four BIDs in the city are on their way to being formed, while half a dozen others are in the talking stages, said Jake Lynn, a spokesperson for the city s Department of Small Business Services, which oversees the BID program. There are currently 44 BIDs citywide, he said.
In Flushing, it s the battle to control the grease and food waste generated by dozens of restaurants and produce stands that a BID could help combat. The problem of “the foul odors of the summer months,” as Councilman John C. Liu has described it, has led to Flushing-based volunteer organizations like the Tzu Chi Foundation recently coming forward to clean up the downtown streets on weekends.
“Having some extra manpower to deal with sanitation through the BID would be a good supplement to city services,” said Lynn. A BID could also use its funds to help better market Flushing, which has an Asian downtown rivaling Chinatown. Lynn also said a BID would likely look at getting more “uniform language” on store signs in the area. The yearly budget for the Flushing BID would be approximately $350,000, smaller than the budget for big BIDs (like Times Square), which run up to $3 million a year.
Meanwhile, growth in the Flushing area continues. A new 373,000 square-foot center, called Atlantic Terminal, is scheduled to open in March 2004, anchored by Target. Another 100,000-square-foot mall is being proposed for Main Street and 39th Avenue. But even those won t likely satiate the demand in the area.
“There is such a demand by [national retailer] tenants to be in the boroughs,” said David Rosenberg, executive vice president of Robert K. Futterman & Associates. Retailers like Home Depot, Old Navy and Marshalls were the first to move into Queens and the other outer boroughs five or six years ago, while others “stood scratching their heads,” he said.
While taking over space from defunct retailers is one way to get in now, building new developments to house retail is a tougher proposition. “All of the no-brainer development sites have been gobbled up,” Rosenberg said. Meanwhile, the borough has one major mall, The Queens Center, for a population of two million people. In any other part of the country, there would be five to eight such shopping complexes for a population that size, developers say.
As far as other BIDs, Lynn said Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica would likely gain approval from the City Council and Mayor in the coming weeks or months. There are already three other BIDs in different parts of downtown Jamaica, but this one would encompass the area around the new station for the AirTrain, a monorail service that will shuttle passengers from the Long Island Rail Road to Kennedy Airport.
A 300,000-square-foot office building is also planned on a city-owned site at 94th Street and Sutphin Boulevard, where the LIRR will consolidate its offices in 100,000-square feet of space. Nearby, the opening of the 200,000-square foot Jamaica Center last year was a major boon to the neighborhood, drawing national retailers like the Gap and Old Navy to the area for the first time and resulting in the first movie theater in the area in 30 years.
Despite the retail advances, Lynn said there is still a need for security in the Sutphin Boulevard area, especially if it s going to serve as a commercial area for commuters in the future. “After dark in Jamaica, it can sometimes get a little shady,” he said. “A BID would be able to hire the extra manpower to provide an extra set of eyes.”
In other areas of the city, Fordham Road in the Bronx could be voting on a BID sometime in the near future. The neighborhood will run a “BID for a month” program in September to show business owners the benefits of forming a district. Other BIDs in the works include the first one in Staten Island, in West Brighton; along 5th Avenue in Brooklyn, where there has been a big restaurant boom; Hudson Square in northern TriBeCa; and along Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn.
Fifty percent of a district must vote in favor of a BID for the application to go forward to the City Council. Residential property owners pay a nominal fee usually $1 a year while business owners carry the load in running a BID, usually a few hundred dollars a year per business. Lynn said mom-and-pop businesses who are “barely scraping by” sometimes don t want to dole out the money, but that bigger business groups are usually supportive and “see the big picture.”