Author Blog: The Formation of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in Low-Income Immigrant Neighborhoods of Los Angeles

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. This article is now available in OnlineFirst. 
*****

The Formation of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in Low-Income Immigrant Neighborhoods of Los Angeles

Wonhyung Lee

Assistant professor, School of Social Welfare, 

University at Albany, SUNY

Business improvement districts, or BIDs, are local organizations that aim to revitalize commercial areas. BIDs are self-help organizations in which property or business owners collect funds to improve and promote their retail corridors (Briffault 1999; Houstoun Jr. 2003; Hoyt 2005; Lewis 2010). The collected funds are used for street cleaning, beautification, or security reinforcement in a designated boundary. BIDs have clearly demonstrated benefits for promoting commercial areas over the last two decades. Large and small, BIDs have multiplied rapidly: from about 400 in 1999 to about 1,000 in 2010 across the United States (Cook and MacDonald 2011). BIDs are sometimes referred to as community improvement districts (CIDs), special improvement districts (SIDs), or special services areas (SSAs) contingent on the state legislature.

Los Angeles has the second largest number of BIDs in the United States, second to New York City. As of 2014, more than 40 neighborhoods of Los Angeles have formed BIDs over the last 15 years and reported positive results in trash or graffiti removal and security reinforcement. As BIDs have spread over Los Angeles, however, several neighborhoods have shown slow progress of BID formation effort according to the Los Angeles City Council file records. Such neighborhoods could not form BIDs for longer than five years, which far exceeds the average of 18 to 22 months taken in other neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The neighborhoods that show slow BID formation are overall lower-income neighborhoods with higher concentration of foreign-born populations (Lee 2014). The slow, if not failed, attempt to form BIDs requires special attention considering that the areas without BIDs can experience a lack of services and may suffer from the influx of undesirable elements from nearby areas with BIDs as they may push those elements outside their boundaries (Caruso and Weber 2006; Hoyt and Gopal-Agge 2007; Lewis 2010).

This research thus examines how BID formation efforts unfold in poor immigrant neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and more specifically, how the neighborhoods that struggle with BID formation differ from the ones that have successfully formed a BID.  I present a comparative case study of two adjacent low-income immigrant neighborhoods, one with slow BID formation and the other with successful BID formation: MacArthur Park and the Byzantine Latino Quarter, respectively. In both neighborhoods BID formation is active on paper; however, MacArthur Park has not been able to establish a BID over the last several years, whereas the Byzantine Latino Quarter succeeded in establishing a BID in 2003 and renewed it in 2014. The data for this study were collected during a year-long field research in Los Angeles from April, 2013 to April, 2014. Three types of data—interviews, archival records and documents, and observations—were collected to understand the BID formation processes in MacArthur Park and the BLQ.

This study found that while the two case study neighborhoods share common challenges as a large number of commercial vacancies, a high turnover rate, and insufficient funding and staff, the BID formation efforts in MacArthur Park and the BLQ evolved differently with respect to community resources and organizing processes. The factors that may have contributed to the successful BID formation in the BLQ include the presence of invested and persistent community stakeholders, strong organizational resources, residents’ participation and activism in local community development, and an awareness of demographic change and openness to multiethnic groups in the neighborhood. On the other hand, MacArthur Park showed relative absence of grassroots leadership, partnership organizations, venues where residents can participate in community affairs, and an explicit goal or direction to embrace multiethnic groups in the neighborhood.

This research demonstrates that community organizing capacity and characteristics can change the course and outcome of BID formation. The stories of MacArthur Park and the BLQ show that BID formation is a complex process that depends not only on the economic characteristics of properties and property owners, but also on various social and political aspects of communities and the process of community organizing. This study provides a strong support for some of the criteria identified in previous research for successful community organizing and development, including internal leadership, grassroots community organizing, and strong and direct ties with various human and organizational resources (Chaskin 2001; Peterman 2000; Smock 2004; Dreier 1996).

            Furthermore, this study expands the current theoretical and empirical understandings of multicultural and multilingual community organizing by providing an actual case of organizing process in which multiethnic community stakeholders cooperate in order to achieve a collective goal. Furthermore, the BID formation process in the BLQ suggests challenges with multicultural and multilingual organizing, which include territorial competitions over ethnic identity, knowledge gap among various ethnic groups, and thus their unequal participation in local governance. These issues create room for discussing communicative, collaborative, pluralistic, and participatory planning models (Huxley 2000; Healey 2003) for multiethnic communities.

For practice, this research suggests important prerequisites for low-income immigrant neighborhoods to achieve BID formation and further community development. As demonstrated by the case of the BLQ, BIDs can serve not merely as an economic development strategy but also as an intermediary path for community development in inner city neighborhoods that struggle with poverty and other social problems. And yet, some of these neighborhoods may be stuck in the BID formation processes and at risk of economic marginalization when they lack community capacity and resources. These areas need alternative or more incremental approaches to strengthen collective action to improve the local commercial districts. Public officials and community organizers can assist the community building efforts by identifying organizations that can best serve the local need, investing in leadership training, developing partnership organizations, and holding educational sessions or social events that can raise awareness of collective problems and diversity in the community.

References

Briffault, Richard. 1999. “A Government for Our Time? Business Improvement Districts and Urban Governance.” Columbia Law Review 99. HeinOnline: 365.

Caruso, Gina, and Rachel Weber. 2006. “Getting the Max for the Tax: An Examination of BID Performance Measures.” International Journal of Public Administration 29 (1-3). Routledge: 187–219. doi:10.1080/01900690500409088.

Chaskin, Robert J. 2001. “Building Community Capacity: A Definitional Framework and Case Studies from a Comprehensive Community Initiative .” Urban Affairs Review 36 (3 ): 291–323. doi:10.1177/10780870122184876.

Cook, Philip J, and John MacDonald. 2011. “Public Safetly through Private Action: An Economic Assessment of BIDs.” Economic Journal 121: 445–62.

Dreier, Peter. 1996. “Community Empowerment Strategies: The Limits and Potential of Community Organizing in Urban Neighborhoods.” Cityscape 2 (2): 121–59.

Healey, Patsy. 2003. “Collaborative Planning in Perspective.” Planning Theory 2 (2 ): 101–23. doi:10.1177/14730952030022002.

Houstoun, Lawrence O. 2003. BIDs: Business Improvement Districts. 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute.

Hoyt, Lorlene. 2005. “Do Business Improvement District Organizations Make a Difference?: Crime In and Around Commercial Areas in Philadelphia.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 25 (2): 185–99. doi:10.1177/0739456X05279276.

Hoyt, Lorlene, and Devika Gopal-Agge. 2007. “The Business Improvement District Model: A Balanced Review of Contemporary Debates.” Geography Compass 1 (4). Blackwell Publishing Ltd: 946–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2007.00041.x.

Huxley, Margo. 2000. “The Limits to Communicative Planning.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 19 (4 ): 369–77. doi:10.1177/0739456X0001900406.

Lee, Wonhyung. 2014. “Critical Perspectives on Local Governance: The Formation of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in Low-Income Immigrant Neighborhoods of Los Angeles.”

Lewis, Nathaniel M. 2010. “Grappling with Governance: The Emergence of Business Improvement Districts in a National Capital.” Urban Affairs Review 46 (2): 180–217. doi:10.1177/1078087410378844.

Peterman, William. 2000. Neighborhood Planning and Community-Based Development: The Potential and Limits of Grassroots Action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Smock, Kristina. 2004. Democracy in Action: Community Organizing and Urban Change. New York: Columbia University Press.

 Questions for the author may be referred to: http://www.albany.edu/ssw/wonhyung-lee.php