By James S. Woodman
The effort to instate what would be Chinatown’s first business improvement district has exposed deep rifts among residents with different visions of a changing community.
A committee with the support of the Chinatown Partnership will soon begin to step up efforts to advocate for a BID in a neighborhood that has been historically resistant to the idea. While pro-BID residents say that in the wake of 9/11, Chinatown must innovate to catch up to its surrounding, more lucrative neighborhoods, others contend that a BID will wash away the last of what Chinatown most prizes: small, family-owned businesses.
BIDs that exist all over the city, and which encircle Chinatown, are generally run on the same principle: tax commercial landowners in order to provide them services that will improve their neighborhood’s business. Typically the landlord passes the tax increase on to their tenants’ rent.
For an area famous for its inattention toward sanitation standards, the BID’s first priority would be keeping the streets clean. Promoting the area for tourism would be another major mission of the BID.
Although BIDs can form with 51 percent of the property owners in a neighborhood, they often need more backing than that to pass into law. Chinatown’s city councilmember, Alan Gerson, who has supported other BIDs in his district, is uncertain about the Chinatown BID’s prospect.
“The only way BIDs can work is when there is a broad consensus in a community,” Gerson said. “This is clearly not the case in Chinatown.”
There have been unsuccessful BID forays in Chinatown over the last 20 years, but many believe that the effort to form a BID will intensify in the near future as the Chinatown Partnership’s funding and services dwindle.
The Chinatown Partnership provides BID-like services like cleaning the streets, but it does not levy taxes on property owners. Formed after 9/11 to help the community’s falling rate of business, the Partnership runs on funding it received from the 9/11 Fund and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Now, as their public money is drying up, the Partnership is asking how these services will be maintained. Some think a BID seems to be the logical solution.
“This is a time-tested, time-proven program, that has been tested worldwide and that works. It is used in every suburban shopping mall in America,” said Wellington Chen, executive director of the Chinatown Partnership and the chairperson of, what he calls, “an independent steering committee to explore possibilities of a Chinatown BID.”
“What business owner wants to pick up a broom three times a day to clean in from of his store,” Chen asked. “No, you want someone else to do it. It’s more efficient that way. This is what BIDs are for. It has been proven over and over again that business owners make money on BIDs.”
Yet some landlords and shopkeepers are skeptical as to whether they will see the BID’s estimated 3-to-7 percent tax increase back in gained profits. And, even more, they fear that the resulting rent increases — due to the BID’s tax and the BID’s propensity to increase real estate values — will force many of the neighborhood’s existing businesses to close or leave the area.
“With a BID, we would have a Chinatown filled with only large chain stores,” said Jan Lee, an anti-BID activist who owns a building and furniture business on Mott St. “There would be a flight of small businesses from the area.”
Retail tenants will ultimately have no say in whether or not the BID is formed; only building owners are allowed to vote on the matter.
A BID’s success in drawing customers to a neighborhood can actually threaten small shopkeepers, says Columbia adjunct economics professor, Moshe Adler, who has written various op-ed pieces about BIDs.
“I’m very concerned for the business owners,” Adler said. “BIDs result in a neighborhood’s gentrification and higher rents, and not all businesses can benefit from this. We will see cheap shops and restaurants disappearing that low-income residents depend on.”
“It is definitely a concern,” said a pro-BID person who used to work for the Chinatown Partnership and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But the hope is that the tide will raise all boats. Is the solution to keep the neighborhood dirty and squalid? Is that really a brighter future? And BID or no BID, we’ll always have greedy landlords.”
Chen believes that Chinatown is deteriorating from within and being left behind by a quickly evolving city. Even in the absence of a BID, Chinatown rents are increasing while businesses are making less money, says Chen. This is a situation that will guarantee the demise of many small shops. “At least the BID will give businesses a chance to survive,” he said. The BID, to Chen, could be the difference between the neighborhood’s life or death.
Chen argues that encouraging tourism in Chinatown, through cleanliness and tourism promotion campaigns, is key to the community’s survival.
“Our capital lies in our proximity to ground zero,” Chen said. “When millions of tourists are visiting ground zero each year, where will we be? When people come to Chinatown they can’t be holding their noses, saying ‘why did I come here?’”
“Tourism is certainly not the lifeblood of Chinatown,” said Lee. “That is a complete misconception. What keeps us going is our residents.”
As far as Chinatown’s current tourist industry is concerned, cleanliness — a main objective of the BID — has not made it one of the city’s most major tourist destinations, according to Paul Lee, who previously owned a retail business on Mott St. and whose family owns two buildings in Chinatown. “Cleanliness is just not a draw for people coming to Chinatown.”
Sanitation is the city’s job, anyway, argues Lee.
Jan Lee, who is not related to Paul, agrees. “For decades Chinatown has tried to hold the city accountable for sanitation,” he said.
By not enforcing common codes, the city is ignoring Chinatown’s sanitation situation, he added. “The municipality has the laws on the books and are ignoring them in Chinatown. Why aren’t they giving more tickets? With the BID in place they can just point to a privatized entity that should be doing all the work.”
This argument carries little weight, says the anonymous former Chinatown Partnership employee, because “the city provides the same service to each community. If you want more, you must pay for it.”
