Mounting a Successful BID Renewal

How do you prepare your organization to mount a successful renewal campaign for your business improvement district?  How can you apply the experiences and successes of other BIDs? 

As part of its on-going Webinar series for downtown practitioners, the International Downtown Association brought together three seasoned practitioners in November 2013, to share their personal experiences with BID renewals:  Andy Taft, President, Downtown Forth Worth, Inc.; Kristi Stokes, President & CEO, Greater Downtown Council of Duluth, MN; and Jim Cloar, consultant for downtown planning, development and management and past president of Downtown Dallas, Inc., Tampa Downtown Partnership, and The Partnership for Downtown St. Louis.

BID renewals discussed in the Webinar included:

• Duluth, MN         (pop. 86,211, metro 279,771)
• Shreveport, LA   (pop. 201,867, metro 439,000)
• St. Louis, MO     (pop. 318,172, metro 2,900,605)
• Fort Worth, TX   (pop. 777,992, metro 2,136,022)

Here is a summary of the lessons learned from our experts, plus a few of my own experiences and examples thrown in for good measure.

Never take your renewal for granted.  A renewal is a good reminder of the importance of year-round promotion of your BID's programs and accomplishments.  Find new and different ways to remind your fee payers and stakeholders of what you do, and how well you do it.  Newsletters, social media, handwritten notes, meetings, phone calls, transit advertising.  The time and money spent keeping what you do "top of mind" with your fee payers will deliver rewards at renewal time. 

 

Start Early.  Starting two years in advance is not too early, according to our experts.   

Establish an Advisory Committee or a Board subcommittee that includes property owners and key influentials.  The committee or board needs to sell it, not the downtown organization staff.  Let others do the talking for you.  Even if your board or advisory committee is convinced the renewal will pass, it is essential to go through the process of renewal.  Remind them of the importance of peer to peer selling!  Set up a time line for your advisory committee that explains in detail goals, strategies and expected outcomes.  Make one-on-one-calls and meetings, get people talking about the renewal.  

Enlist largest property owners first.  Make sure your “heavy hitters” are the first to be on board with your renewal. They can also be tapped for membership in advisory committee.

Identify the Opposition:  Identify property owners and potentially vocal stakeholders who are opposed to the BID’s renewal.  If you haven’t already done so, develop relationships with them.  Meet with them and listen respectfully.  Let them know you understand their concerns.  Spell out measurable, positive results (never assume the results you have been presenting are obvious to everyone). It’s important to talk with people and share the successes of your BID.  Also, give examples of your organization's efficiency and the cost savings your fee payers realize.  Enlist pro-renewal advocates who are peers of those who are opposed.  Determine if those who are opposed have been given false or inaccurate information about the BID; make efforts to present new information.   It’s critical that detractors hear from their peers about the benefits of the BID.    If there were vocal critics who now support the BID, ask them to join you in meetings and to make calls.  If you haven’t won over opponents, continue to try.  Stay respectful.  Don’t give up.  If anything, you’ll demonstrate your sincerity, passion and commitment to the BID’s future success. 

State your case.  Present your BID’s proposed business plan, and highlight your organization’s accomplishments.   Link your BID to strategic plans for your downtown or region. Assemble and report important data and trends. How much new public and private investment has occurred?  How has your residential population increased?  Hotel room inventory?  How many historic buildings have been restored, redeveloped?  How many restaurants, shops and services have opened?  Have retail and food and beverage sales increased and how much tax revenue has that generated?  Have your crime rates and calls for police services improved over time?  Compare and contrast total assessed property values within your BID.  Are they outpacing growth rates in other parts of the region? 

For its 2013 BID renewal, Newcastle NE1 Business Improvement District Company in the U.K., produced an exemplary website and business plan.

Seek endorsements from the Mayor, Council, Condominium Associations.  Gain the support of condo associations versus going to individual condo residents.  This is where your organization’s on-going efforts to communicate your day-to-day and long-term accomplishments via your website, newsletters and business and community meetings will start to pay off. 

Seek media endorsements Meet with the editorial boards of key print and electronic media.   Search out examples of supportive editorials from other BID renewals.  Develop a case statement in summary to share in your meetings with editorial boards.

• Keeping it clean / Renew Downtown's business improvement district.  Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership
• Renew and Expand the Downtown Metropolitan Improvement District. Metropolitan Improvement District, Seattle, WA.
• Making downtown shine more  Downtown Fargo BID
• Downtown Cleveland Alliance hopes to renew special improvement district, Cleveland, OH

Be wary of making unrealistic promises, compromises.  Be wary of setting caps per property, cutting rates and in general making compromises that could potentially hobble the BID five to then years out.  It's easier to decrease assessments when you're going through a renewal, for example, but if you don’t have to do it, our experts recommended resisting that. 

Make clear distinctions between management and leadership.  Keep the BID focused on management.  When your BID takes a position on a particular issue, you risk alienating parts of your constituency and potentially tanking your BID renewal.

Appeal to your fee payers' common sense.  Seek to extend the number of years between renewals.  Having more time between renewals allows an organization to think more long term and more strategically.  Overall, you want your fee payers saying they can't afford NOT to renew. 

 

IDA members can access the complete 60-minute Webinar from the IDA website.

CPTED Offers Downtown Practitioners Pro-active Crime Prevention Strategy

When former Burlington Police Chief Alana Ennis recommended Church Street and our downtown start using CPTED (pronounced sep-ted), our first reaction was “sep what?” 

After first reading about Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, I had a tough time wrapping my head around a crime prevention strategy that was community based, and not directed or managed by our Police.   I grew up on a healthy diet of TV police dramas where the cops and detectives always solved everything, usually in 30 minutes or less!  Over time, I’ve learned that no single agency can solve our complex social problems; successful police departments embrace and foster community partnerships, where the community and police are actively engaged in making downtowns and neighborhoods more safe and secure.

Chief Ennis connected us with CPTED authority Greg Saville, an urban planner, former police officer and founder of the International CPTED Association.  Greg is the principal of Alternation LLC, an international crime prevention and public safety consultancy based in Port Townsend, Washington.  He has helped us lay the foundation of our CPTED program here on Church Street.  An affable Canadian (aren’t they all?), Greg has a strong sense of purpose and focus.   Because we’ve been talking about and using CPTED strategies since 2001, the work has crept into our community’s vernacular.  A few years ago, when I heard a business owner ask,  “How about we use CPTED?,” we knew Greg’s work had made its way into our collective consciousness.

What I value most about CPTED is how it helps to sustain and enhance urban diversity, connected neighborhoods, parks and schools, and activated streets and sidewalks.  The core principles of CPTED were first used in Chicago’s public housing projects in the 60’s.  The CPTED acronym was coined a decade later by criminologist and author C. Ray Jeffery.  CPTED is also a strategy of Problem-Oriented Policing which Burlington’s police department embraces.  It encourages less dependence on the criminal justice system, and more on bringing public agencies, the community and private sector together to analyze, evaluate and proactively increase safety and security. 

CPTED focuses on three design strategies:  natural surveillance which uses physical features like landscaping, activities and the presence of people to keep an area safe and secure; access control, including design features, such as safety gates and fencing, to limit access by intruders; and territorial reinforcement, such as maintenance, gives stakeholders a stronger sense of ownership and sends a signal that an area is cared for, respected and being watched over. 

From Greg, we learned to approach CPTED in four steps.

First, define and understand the problem – both physically (the environment) and psychologically (perceptions of stakeholders).   Greg taught us how to develop our own CPTED site analysis form.  The Design Centre for CPTED in Vancouver offers a great template to get started.

Begin by documenting existing conditions and emerging trends in public and private spaces in the downtown.  Ask questions of your key users about their perspectives.  How safe do they feel in specific areas in and around the downtown and why, or why not?  Are exterior doors locked, are fire escapes accessible to taggers from the ground floor?  Is trash, litter or graffiti present? What kinds of security enhancements might be needed on private property, including security cameras or hardened light fixtures with motion detectors (that can’t be broken with a thrown object?)  Would better lighting or landscaping help to activate public streets and sidewalks at night?  Are there changes to laws, rules, regulations or policies needed?  Can financial incentives encourage private property owners to make changes?

Engage your stakeholders.  Business owners, employees and residents know their area and have first hand experience of the relationship between crime and the environment. Also, both city departments and downtown social service agencies can provide insights on conditions of public and private space and trends in behavior.  Because the majority of customers are women, we periodically organize daytime and evening walkabouts for small groups of women who work or shop on Church Street.  If there are areas in your downtown where women will not walk, that means it’s unsafe and must be addressed immediately.  We also make late night safety audits with downtown police officers, checking where crime is occurring and if lighting and better door locks are needed.  We check police data, subscribe to and follow nixle.com and talk with officers serving our downtown district about the types of crimes occurring. 

Create a plan from your analysis and stakeholder responses.  Keep it simple and realistic.  Solving these kinds of problems takes patience, persistence and time.  Thank people, businesses and organization by name in the plan (if appropriate) and distribute it broadly to policy makers, neighbors, and business owners.  Promote your accomplishments – even the small ones – so that stakeholders feel empowered and encouraged and your CPTED efforts maintain credibility.

                                                                             

Finally, keep track of your progress.  For the sake of your program’s success and credibility with the community, understand what’s working, where it’s working and why (or why not).  CPTED isn’t the silver bullet solution to crime prevention.  Because we humans and our behaviors are always evolving, your plans will be ever-evolving.

Sign up to receive posts from Greg Saville's blog, SafeGrowth.  The International CPTED Association offers a wealth of information and certification programs.  For those who can’t get enough CPTED, download the latest edition of “CPTED Perspective,” published bi-annually.  The Center for Problem Oriented Policing is also a great resource.  Download their guide, “Using CPTED in Problem Solving.”  A before and after example is shown below