Business improvement districts, bricks and mortar businesses, vendors, and managing the vitality of a commercial district

Yesterday's Post had an article on food trucks, "A food fight on D.C.'s streets," because the city has issued new regulations for comment (Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Vending Regulations 24 DCMR 5) and the regulations are much more supportive of this type of vending than in the past.

Many restaurant proprietors are against expansion of food trucks, as you can imagine they would be. They believe that because it costs more money to have a physical presence, not to mention that they likely generate more revenue to the city in terms of property and sales tax revenues, that they should be protected from competition from street and food truck vendors.

I don't know the process for sales tax revenue payments for food trucks. I know for the "hot dog carts" it's a flat rate, which used to be less than $2,000/year. Because the DCRA website is one of the revised city websites, like DDOT's, it's almost impossible to efficiently navigate and find useful information on it, so I am giving up trying to determine what the sales tax policy is.

What I find troubling in the article isn't the fact of opposing interests, but of how the business improvement districts are not trying to manage multiple and conflicting duties in ways that support food trucks as well as merchants, but are coming out solely in favor of the merchants.

I can see why this is so, because business improvement districts are paid for out of additional taxes levied on commercial property owners, and these taxes are paid for the tenants--retail and restaurant proprietors.

But at the same time, business improvement districts are supposed to planning, managing, and marketing the commercial district for success and that means that BIDs need to be more than just the mouthpiece for retailers.

From the article:

For years, the District has sought to diversify its street-food scene, and rules proposed by city regulators in June were designed expressly to attract unique vendors like Fry Captain, the truck that parked near Bennett's shop.

But brick-and-mortar restaurants are pushing back against the proposed rules, saying they fail to protect existing businesses that make bigger investments in their neighborhoods and pay more in taxes. In response, food truck owners, fearful of the power of restaurant lobbyists, are busy drumming up popular support for the proposed rules. ...

Several business improvement districts - nonprofit groups set up by local businesses to provide community amenities - have proposed alternative rules that might keep food trucks 100 feet away from restaurants or prohibit them from spending more than 30 minutes in a given area.

Perhaps the most far-reaching proposal, from the Adams Morgan Business Improvement District, would exclude food trucks entirely from areas the city designates as "entertainment districts," including Adams Morgan, U Street and Chinatown.

"Grouping food trucks in a neighborhood like Adams Morgan would be counterproductive," said Kristen Barden, director of the Adams Morgan Partnership, which represents businesses in the neighborhood. "This area is not under-served."

BIDs need to plan for vitality and interest in a commercial district. That means being focused on what is attractive to customers. And what is attractive and interesting to customers isn't always what is on offer, now, by the businesses.

Plus, some people don't want to sit down and eat, they want the food without waiting, and want to eat on the move. So you can argue that food trucks can help meet demand that is currently being unmet.

Because commercial and entertainment destinations need to be constantly refreshed in order to maintain interest in the area vis a vis other commercial and entertainment destinations in the region, food trucks and street vending can and depending on the commercial district, should be included within an overall destination development and marketing program to provide innovation and maintain competitiveness on the part of the commercial district.

What property owners and retailers forget is that the BID is responsible for the commercial district overall, not just for meeting the sometimes parochial and self-interested concerns that they have as well.

The problem with BIDs is that the membership and oversight structure is narrow--mostly made up of commercial property owners and retailers--and the broader questions concerning the interest of other stakeholders, including residents and customers, is often overlooked. (Of course, residents and customers is another dialectic in and of itself.)

In fact, this is a problem for commercial district revitalization programs generally. The Main Street approach, which tends to target smaller commercial districts, works around that by involving residents and other stakeholder organizations in the planning, management, and programming process, so that broader concerns and ideas are represented in the overall commercial district revitalization program more generally. This is also a deliberate process because typically retailers and property owners might be particularly good at dealing with their own businesses and marketing programs for their business, but lack the skills and interest in dealing with this for the entire commercial district.

For this and other reasons, it would be better for Business Improvement Districts to use the tax-based funding model, but to create a management, marketing, and programming structure along the lines of the Main Street model, so that more stakeholders and interests are represented in the final product and process.

Most of the Business Improvement Districts in San Diego use the Main Street Approach. And some BIDs do so elsewhere. But typically, BIDs are members of the International Downtown Association, not the Main Street Center, and the two "models" do not overlap or intersect very much.

This is an area where the fault of the BID management model is glaring and evident and shows the need for improvement, especially in DC, where there are BIDs in many smaller areas that are much different from typical downtowns.

For example, in both Adams-Morgan and Capitol Hill there are many competitive organizations that partner but could also be amalgamated into a combined BID-Main Street structure. That's probably what should happen, but won't.

And in the meantime, food trucks will congregate in the areas where customers demand that they be.