CREW Boston Takes Look at Downtown Boston’s BID

BOSTON—In 2010, when Rosemarie Sansone, then-president of the Downtown Crossing Partnership, was putting the final pieces of the puzzle together to launch the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District (BID), the Filene’s Basement building in the center was still a “giant hole in the ground.” There had been advances, most notably restoration of the Boston Opera House and the Modern and Paramount Theatres, investments by Suffolk University and Emerson College as well as the arrival of new restaurants, but the neighborhood now known as DTX was still grimy and considered unsafe at night.

Nearly seven years later, the 34-square-block BID area (from Chinatown to City Hall Plaza and the Boston Common to Post office Square) is one of Boston’s most vibrant venues, with nearly two dozen residential projects completed, well over 100 ground-floor restaurants launched and a plethora of retail and service businesses established. A coveted grocery store (Roche Bros.) and flagship retailer (Primark) have moved into the neighborhood, as well as a slew of TAMI (technology, advertising, media and information) businesses that have helped slash office vacancy rates almost in half (16 percent to 8.7 percent). The assessed value of the BID’s commercial real estate has ballooned from $4.6 billion to almost $6.3 billion, and the “hole in the ground” is now filled by Millennium Tower, the 60-story, mixed-use skyscraper that last year set a record for Boston’s highest recorded home sale when its penthouse condo fetched $37.5 million.

Sansone was recently the guest for CREW Boston’s luncheon program, “How Boston’s First BID is Innovating Downtown,” appropriately held at the Hyatt Regency Boston in Downtown Crossing, and she spoke of a remarkable transformation of the district and the role that BID has played in the revitalization of an area whose post-2008 recession had become a national story of blight.

She began with a brief history of the BID. Surprisingly, Boston was one of the last major cities in the country to form such an entity, even lagging behind Bay State municipalities Hyannis, Northampton, Springfield, Taunton and Westfield. BID funding comes from a voluntary assessment on the district’s property owner’s tax bills, ranging from $500 to $200,000, payments which supplement baseline city services for the benefit of not only the district’s property owners, but residents, students, tourists and tens of thousands of workers who descend weekdays on the area. The stated purpose of a BID is to “improve business conditions for the designated area, attract and retain businesses, generate jobs and improve the quality of life” – something Sansone says it has clearly helped to accomplish.

The current operating budget is $6.7 million, of which nearly half is dedicated to cleaning and hospitality services rendered by the BIDs “Ambassadors” – recognizable by their orange shirts and green jackets. Ambassadors welcome and assist with wayfinding, perform cleaning and maintenance functions and are the eyes and the ears of the district. The BID also dedicates approximately 13 percent of its budget to promotions, such as the Taste of Downtown Crossing held last September. Cross-promoted with a classic car show and coinciding with the beginning of Fashion Week, the afternoon event featured local musicians, a wine and beer garden, culinary demonstrations and food tastings from over 20 local restaurants on the Avenue de Lafayette. An additional 13 percent of the budget is dedicated to improving the streetscape by installing ground planters, hanging baskets and during holiday times, festive decorations such as wreaths.

The BID comes up for renewal in 2018, so Sansone and the operation’s management are exploring best practices from other groups across the country. “We’re looking at where we are now, where have we come from and where do we want to be in the next 5-10 years,” Sansone told a crowd of approximately 240 people, including organization members and their guests. “We are also monitoring transportation and pedestrian trends, particularly following the opening of the Government Center MBTA stop, to deploy more ambassadors who can help with wayfinding.”

The Boston BID has also conducted multiple discovery sessions and electronic surveys and spoken extensively with key stakeholders such as residents of the district, retail managers, business owners and nonprofits, those efforts made to determine the best way forward. One of the issues that came out of those sessions was the need for diversity in retail, as respondents want to see more local brands, as well as hardware and pet stores. It was also suggested that some of the vacant storefronts could be utilized by pop-up stores to increase vitality in the BID and allow new concepts to be tested by local, national and overseas brands. “That is one of our priorities moving forward,” said Sansone.

The former Boston City Councilor has also committed herself to banding with other BID leaders throughout the country (particularly the northeast cities like New York, Philadelphia and D.C) “to see if we can have a collective voice, because for some reason I’m concerned that urban issues are not going to be as popular (with the current administration) as we move forward,” she said, adding that she intends to work with some of her counterparts “to make sure that some of the things that we think are important – whether they’re infrastructure issues, looking at federal dollars going into states for transportation issues, or whether it’s really looking at how we’re going to deal collectively as a society with homelessness, the opioid crisis and other issues that we all deal with.”

Downtown Crossing Boston MA