Only One Business Improvement District on Staten Island

Posted on 09. Dec, 2010 by Daniel Tucker in Uncategorized

Merchants in Chinatown, NoHo, and Downtown Brooklyn are forming new business improvement districts they hope will attract customers, raise property values, and ensure a bright economic future for their neighborhoods.

Staten Island, however, is a BID no-man’s-land. Only one of the city’s 64 BIDs—Forest Avenue—calls the borough home. Recent attempts to set up BIDs on New Dorp Lane, Bay Street, and in Great Kills have foundered, frustrating local business and development leaders.

“Businesses are losing out,” says Linda Baran, president of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce.

Island merchants have little exposure to BIDs, and the uninitiated often associate them with Christmas lights and street sweepers, not economic gains. The borough’s merchants’ associations, often precursors to BIDs, are weak, and the island has few of the dense clusters of businesses necessary for BID creation.

“It’s not Brooklyn. It’s not Manhattan. It’s really like a mixture of the city and Jersey,” says Kamillah Hanks, executive director of the Downtown Staten Island Council.

Ms. Hanks wants to organize a BID downtown, but businesses there are spread so thin across the four town centers of St. George, Tompkinsville, Stapleton, and Clifton that it’s hard to pinpoint a target area.

Plus, some downtown merchants need to be educated about the potential benefits before a BID can even be proposed.  “If you present a BID right away, the first question is going to be ‘Why? What is it going to do for me?” Ms. Hanks says.

BID proponents say there’s an added impediment: Staten Islanders have “an island mentality” where people feel they are overtaxed for the subways, buses, and sanitation services they say primarily serve other New Yorkers.

“It’s a very hard sell,” says Susan Meeker, who founded the Forest Avenue BID and is helping organize a proposed BID on Victory Boulevard. “People say to me, ‘Why should I be paying extra when I don’t even get what I’m paying for?’”

All property owners in a BID pay a yearly assessment that is added to the property taxes. Landlords usually pass the added fee along to businesses that rent from them.

Angelo Pappalardo, Vice President of Century 21 Papp Realty on Victory Boulevard, estimates a new BID would cost his family as much as $2500 for each of the several lots they own. The promise of holiday lights, networking events, and more street cleaning do not impress him.

The Forest Avenue BID’s $150,000 in yearly assessments supports a marketing campaign, an anti-graffiti initiative, street cleaning, holiday lights, and a biannual avenue meet-and-greet.

Susan Meeker says these services and events foster neighborhood unity. More importantly, she says, they pay off economically.

“We’ve been through an economic downturn where there are a lot of vacancies along every commercial strip, right? Drive along Forest Avenue,” she says. “We have new people coming in,” noting two long-term vacancies have recently been filled by a Capital One Bank and a new restaurant.

Meanwhile, an almost three-year effort to create a BID along Victory Boulevard is nearing a make-or-break point.

“We haven’t hit a complete brick wall, but it’s getting closer and closer,” Meeker says.

According to Meeker recent cuts to city services, like buses, have angered potential members and turned them against the BID.  And there’s another issue. Meeker has offered her expertise to help organize that BID, but now the steering committee needs to take the reins. Meeker is not sure the leadership is there.

“The most important thing is to have a very dynamic steering committee, she says. “If the steering committee is not willing to make the commitment to go out there and talk to the ones that are reluctant, it won’t happen,” she says.