BID Testimony on Modifying BID Law Provision

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With crime down, physical improvements to the environment up and a host of other positive developments in place, the DowntownDC BID wants to include residential properties as members. More than 640 commercial properties are now BID members, meaning they pay a self-imposed property tax to enhance economic vitality in the BID area.

Richard H. Bradley, the BID’s executive director, testified at a DC Council Committee on Business, Consumer and Regulatory Affairs hearing last week that incorporating residential properties as members will allow the organization to “provide additional services to handle the extra demands that come from having a ‘living downtown,’ which includes more services in the evenings and on weekends.”

Currently, the BID’s Downtown Safety/Hospitality and Maintenance employees (SAMs) keep Downtown streets clean, safe and friendly. They assist workers, visitors and residents with a variety of needs, from providing directions to serving as the “eyes and ears” of local law enforcement. Over the next decade, as Downtown continues to grow and become more dynamic and vibrant, the need for their services will grow. The opening of CityCenterDC and the Washington, DC Marriott Marquis convention center hotel next year will be the catalyst to these changes, accelerating other trends that will add more retail and restaurants to the Downtown and city economy.

Modifying a provision in the BID law would allow the DowntownDC BID to approach residential properties to get their consent to join the organization, an option available, but not exercised, during the BID’s creation in 1997. At the time, the BID’s primary concern was to regain the momentum of the commercial office markets that had gone into a tailspin as the city entered bankruptcy. But over the life of the DowntownDC BID, the number of Downtown residential units has grown dramatically, from roughly 1,200 to more than 7,000 today, primarily because of the BID’s effort to help draft a tax abatement program that stimulated the first 1,000 units of market-rate housing—the first to be built in nearly 15 years.

For a copy of the testimony, click here (PDF).