Dear Fulton Street, What Have You Done For Me Lately?

Bed-Stuy resident Doug Jones has a pet peeve: dirty sidewalks.

He lives three blocks off Fulton Street and, he says, it erks him to walk down Fulton and be assaulted by the site of empty cups thrown curbside, chicken bones on the sidewalk, unwanted flyers canvassing the street and plastic bags floating at your feet.

“I believe the trash on Fulton is driving away potential shoppers and causing retail leakage,” said Jones. “I want to see Fulton Street so clean that I can eat off it.”

So, he made an executive decision: He decided not to renew the annual agreement Bed-Stuy Gateway Business Improvement District (BID) has held with Atlantic Maintenance, the sanitation contractors responsible for keeping Fulton Street clean.

Instead, he has retained them on a month-to-month basis and provided them with benchmarks of what he’d like to see. In this way, each month, Atlantic Maintenance will have a new set of goals before another check is cut.

Since taking on the job as the BID’s new executive director in June, Jones has been hard at work trying to quicken the revitalization of Fulton Street, Bed-Stuy’s most prominent commercial corridor which stretches ten blocks from Classon to Utica Avenues.

Established on March 30, 2009, the Bed-Stuy Gateway Business Improvement District is the newest of New York City's 64 Business Improvement Districts, home to 400 businesses contained within nearly 500,000 square feet of retail space. 

Businesses within the BID district pay an additional tax to fund street cleaning, security, capital improvements and marketing of the area to help spur commercial revitalization.

Usually, when people think revitalization and improvement, they imagine the establishment of major retail chains and big brand names. Jones recognizes the advantage of wooing the big brand names to Bed-Stuy, which is definitely a goal. However, his more immediate concern is preserving and empowering the existing and future small businesses that have long served as the backbone of the neighborhood.

Jones splits his time between his 3^rd-floor office in Restoration Plaza and working in the field. In fact, it’s not unusual to find him on any given day, walking along Fulton Street, talking to contractors or store owners about his vision for the district. But he says, his greatest challenge, has been getting the longtime merchants and landlords to buy into his vision and see its merits.

Under Jone’s leadership and with the BID's deputy director, Lisa Thompson, the BID is working towards a comprehensive “retail attraction initiative,” one that will encourage Bed-Stuy residents to spend dollars on Fulton Street and not flee to Manhattan or surrounding neighborhoods to shop.

“The problem is, an overwhelming number of business owners don’t live in the neighborhood,” said Jones. So unlike some of the other smaller communities, such as Fort Greene, Park Slope or Cobble Hill, where residents and business-owners are one in the same, in Bed-Stuy, few merchants truly have a vested interest in seeing the neighborhood improve.

Jones and Thompson operate as a sort of yin and yang, where Jones seems to focus more on addressing existing problems and preserving some of the smaller businesses, Thompson steps in as a visionary of how to leverage the neighborhood's assets to attract new businesses.

"There are a lot of assets that are overlooked in this neighborhood, and one of the reasons I took this job is because I understand what's happening," said Thompson. "It's about retention and attraction. We have to start marketing our assets, and not focus so much on the deficits-- what we do not have."

As a part of their effort to retain-and-attract, they have set forth lot of moving parts, including stepping up the BID’s cleanliness program, which includes beefed-up sanitation, heightened security, new garbage cans, new sidewalks, more tree beds, art and beautification.Thanks to a partnership with Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation’s Workforce Development Division, the entire street cleaning team is from Bed-Stuy.

Also, through a retail leasing program they're identifying large commercial development spaces and working with JSCS Group, a consulting firm that is sending out letters of invitation to companies seeking larger-scale retail spaces, for such businesses as eat-in family restaurants, gyms and pharmacies.

It has also meant brokering a new vision amongst the existing merchants and landlords to market their stores—one that will effectively expand their clientele. Already, this has started in the form of building a strong online presence for the merchants, including an e-commerce component, that allows people to purchase from Fulton’s stores online.

“Many of these merchants don’t see a need to ever go online because they don’t understand its value,” said Jones. “We’re trying to change that by showing them how to engage with their clients, market themselves and promote their businesses online.”

For instance, the BID is proposing to give residents a special day each month where all of the hair salons offer its customers a 20 percent discount, or a “Restaurant Day” each week where all of the private food shops offer discounts on the day of the week traffic is slowest.

“Already, there’s a lot happening,” said Jones. “It’s not at its ideal place, but already, there are a lot of new business owners that live locally, are invested in the neighborhood and want to see the businesses around them do better.”

Jones points to new businesses such as , , , and (which just opened a second store two blocks west on Fulton), all of which were a part of the BID. It’s a small handful of stores, he admits, but it’s a good start.

“Changes are happening; we’re making progress,” says Jones. “Is it going to happen immediately? No. Next month? Probably not. You should begin to see changes happen that you can recognize by next year.”

A full revitalization would take approximately five years, he adds. But many of the more immediate changes, such as cleaner streets, new tree beds and sidewalks will be ready to debut by October 8, in time for the kickoff of “Bed-Stuy Alive.”

“I want to see for Bed-Stuy the same things that places like Downtown Brooklyn has for its residents,” says Jones, “Dynamic, clean, boutiquey establishments that are owned by and serving local residents.”

As far as that brand-new gym or possible Duane Reade or Rite Aid? Don't worry, Ms. Thompson is working on that too.