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Chinatown Property Owners Divided Over Business Improvement District

By Patrick Hedlund | November 18, 2010 10:45pm

By Patrick Hedlund

DNAinfo News Editor

CHINATOWN — A new survey by a group that hopes to establish a Business Improvement District in Chinatown - and tax property owners for maintenance of their area - has found near unanimous support among the business community.

The Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation stated this week that 97 percent of business owners supported the creation a business improvement district (BID) to pay for cleaning and beautification efforts in Chinatown's traditionally trash-strewn streets.

However, the findings — culled from 2,300 surveys sent to owners across Chinatown — ran in stark contrast to the numbers gathered by those opposed to the BID, who claimed the program would unfairly tax small businesses in the lower-income community.

"In the field, I'm finding something totally different, almost the inverse," Jan Lee, a Chinatown property owner, former business owner and member of the Civic Center Residents Coalition, said of the Partnership's figures.

"I'm trying to think who on my street, Mott Street, is for this, and I can't find anyone."

So what, then, does the neighborhood really want?

The Partnership recently began a public relations push to promote the BID's formation, citing a Dec. 31 expiration of a multimillion-dollar city grant program that had been providing street-cleaning services since 2006.

The BID — which would have a $1.3 million budget its first year, with more than three-quarters of the funds reserved for sidewalk and street cleaning — would charge property owners some of the lowest fees of any BID in the city, according to the Partnership.

In addition to the 97 percent approval rate, which was drawn from 550 survey responses, (which was the number of returned survey forms minus 800 individual condo owners to whom the proposal does not apply), the Partnership's pitch was bolstered by letters of support from 600 local business owners and residents.

But Lee's own survey found that most owners do not want a BID, and he explained that charging stakeholders to clean the streets won't address long-term issue in the neighborhood.

"There's an ignorant view that street sweeping is the panacea for Chinatown's survival," he said, arguing that cleaning the streets to encourage tourism would not address larger economic issues in Chinatown, and would only hurt already struggling owners.

"There's a huge disparity between businesses that rely on tourism and businesses that rely on the local population," he said. "There's a failure to recognize that the economic engine is its indigenous population."

Nonetheless, some business owners have seen the benefits of the existing street-cleaning program — and they want to make sure it remains in place to keep customers coming through their doors.

"It's not only the image of Chinatown, it's the image of the whole city," said S.W. Sang, the owner of Golden Jade Jewelry at 189 Canal Street for the past 38 years. "Tourists see the garbage. They say, ‘How come your city has no Sanitation Department? How come the city smells so bad?'"

Sang, who has done outreach for the Partnership on this issue, said most businesses in the vicinity of his shop supported the BID.

Thirty-five percent of owners within the BID's boundaries — defined as Broome Street to the north, Broadway to the west, Allen and Rutgers streets to the east, and White, Worth and Madison streets to the south — would pay the minimum $200 fee per year, according to the Partnership.

Seventy-four percent of owners would pay less than $1,000 per year, the group noted, and residential property owners would pay just $1 per year.

The Partnership's executive director, Wellington Chen, had previously stated the BID's "pooling of resources" would allow the area's business owners to have a stronger collective voice.

"It finally gives the small businesses and the people in the community a place at the table," he said. "This is truly for the benefit of the community."

Lee, however — who has worked with Chen and the Partnership on other neighborhood initiatives — wasn't buying it.

"There's no reason for me to get into a business transaction that's open-ended," he said, explaining that BID members' dues can increase over the years and that owners could not leave the program once they're in.

"Would you enter into a car lease when they said your payments would be fluctuating? It just doesn't make sense."

The Chinatown BID proposal will come before Community Boards 1, 2 and 3 for approval in the coming weeks, and the City Council must ultimately vote in favor of the plan for it to move forward.