Business boosters in Cypress Hills are in the process of forming the neighborhood’s first Business Improvement District with the hope of transforming a historically disenfranchised community into one that’s rich with thriving mom-and-pop shops along one of its main commercial corridors.
The proposed BID, officially named Cypress Hills Fulton Business Improvement District, would span 26 blocks of Cypress Hills’ Fulton Street from Van Siclen Avenue to Eldert Lane. And with an estimated first-year budget of $400,000 — the money for which would come from an additional charge imposed on commercial and residential property owners, with the latter only paying $1 per year, as well as from grants and donations — it would help supplement struggling city services including sanitation, security and beautification.
“Wear and tear on the street is where BIDs can communicate faster and better to merchants and business owners on those corridors, like where sanitation has lost resources,” said Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, who represents the district and who formerly chaired the City Council’s sanitation committee.
The Cypress Hills BID would be the first in Nurse’s district and the 23rd in Brooklyn. Across the city, and especially in the outer boroughs, BIDs have routinely been met with opposition due to their association with higher costs of living and the privatization of public spaces. Over in Queens, for example, residents of Jackson Heights rejected a BID in 2017 for those very reasons.
But according to Nurse, the push for a new BID in the diverse Brooklyn enclave — which is home to more than 43,000 residents and large Hispanic, Black, South Asian and Caribbean populations — has been met with robust support.
“I have not had any mom-and-pops or small businesses or any entities from Fulton Street or Cypress Hills communicate to me that they are in opposition to this BID,” said Nurse.
The neighborhood borders several major thoroughfares, including the Jackie Robinson Parkway, Conduit Avenue and Atlantic Avenue, and sits next to one of the borough’s largest green spaces, Highland Park. Served by the J train, Cypress Hills has more than 300 small businesses, such as bodegas, laundromats, salons and various food services. It has a median household income of $56,443 — nearly $15,000 less than the citywide average, and $11,000 less than in Brooklyn, according to census data.
Lowell Herschberger, a director at the Cypress Hills Local Development Corp., said during a March 6 hearing on the BID proposal before the City Planning Commission that the neighborhood is a good one for a BID because of the high percentage of business ownership there.
“For too many years, our community has been left behind,” he said. “We saw this as an appropriate strategy for the community, which has been disenfranchised over the years, and as an opportunity to create wealth for very small [businesses], immigrant-owned businesses and women-owned businesses.”
The Cypress Hills Local Development Corp. as well as residents and local business owners several years ago began trying to kickstart the business-boosting group in a community they felt desperately needed one, especially after struggling throughout the pandemic. The proposed BID also has the backing of Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and Community Board 5, which voted unanimously in favor of it last month.
“We need a … BID like they have in many other neighborhoods. You [can] see all the vacant stores, garbage, petty crime that exist on the corridor,” said Chief Samsair, a Fulton Street property owner and co-chair of the Cypress Hills Fulton BID steering committee. “This is something personal for me.”
Julianne Cuba , 2024-03-07 21:00:21
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