The Bryant Park Corporation is one of the best-known and most successful business improvement districts (BIDs), in which a private entity takes over the management of a public space. Biederman took over Bryant Park in 1986, crowding out drug dealers and bringing in movies and restaurants and Broadway music and ice skating to make it one of the biggest and most successful BID ventures. Now there are more than 650 BIDs across the United States. Researchers agree that BIDs have grown partly due to the financial challenges of city governments. At a time when city budgets are shrinking, more BIDs may step in to fill those budget gaps.īIDs are something like a little city.
Each property owner in the district pays a fee–called an assessment–to a private nonprofit corporation that puts that money right back into the district, providing essential services like sanitation and security, improving the streetscape, and marketing the area to attract more shoppers and businesses. Although BIDs existed in an earlier form as early as the 1930s and 1940s, they grew in number after the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when New York City and other urban centers were at their worst–blighted and infested with crime.Ĭities are in trouble again. In its December 2009 report, the National League of Cities predicted that the municipal sector will face a total budget shortfall of between $56 billion and $83 billion during 2010-2012.
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