Adams Morgan public space management + Adams Morgan Day

AMD, 2012.

Adams Morgan Day was once one of the premier street festivals in DC.  

I have fond memories because in 2000 or 2001 I picked up the "Restore the Core" report at the Sierra Club booth.  It was also the site of my first date with Suzanne.

The report was about smart and more intensive growth, transit, etc., and it helped propel me from being interested in urbanism to actively being engaged in urban revitalization (also spurred by a proposal by BP to build a big gas station at the foot of the gateway to my then neighborhood; "360 Apartment building + Giant Supermarket vs. a BP gas station, which would you choose?").

Over the past ten years, because of competition between different community interest groups (there was the Adams Morgan Main Street program which is now defunct, a merchants association, community associations, and now the Adams Morgan Partnership, the business improvement district) and maybe impropriety, a couple of times the AMD went from a big street festival to being unable to get permission to close the street, which is an issue this year too.  

Adams Morgan Day is this Sunday, but it won't be a big street festival, but some stuff on plazas and side streets.

18th Street, the main thoroughfare in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, in 2017. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

Renewal of the Adams Morgan Partnership BID.  A few weeks ago there was a Post article, "Fight over Adams Morgan nonprofit splits business community," and a follow up op-ed, "The Adams Morgan Business Improvement District board needs an overhaul," with complaints about the Adams Morgan Partnership BID, in advance of the statutory re-approval process.

Some of the complaints are that the top two directors make about 25% of the total budget (about $250,000), and even though the original business plan didn't call for additional police support at night--the district is a major evening entertainment destination, it was instituted immediately after the BID was created at the cost of $200,000-$300,000 annually.

This created a lot of tension.  

There is a divide between the businesses dependent on the entertainment economy and the non-entertainment businesses, plus the usual group of "gadflies" who don't favor group approaches or paying more taxes--the BID tax is 19 cents per $100 of assessed value.  

(My joke is that independent business people are independent for a reason.  They don't like working for or with other people and usually they aren't good at thinking about the business district as a district.) 

I think another issue is the nature of the organization.  Most of the city's BIDs are dominated by large properties like office and apartment buildings, and the people participating in the organization from the member/taxpayer side tend to be more sophisticated than their counterparts in smaller commercial district revitalization organizations. 

The Adams Morgan Partnership is an outlier in that there are very few large properties, instead most are small.  This is why the tax rate for AMP is higher per $100 of assessed value than it is in the city's other BIDs.

FWIW, I think that the AMP does some really great branding and marketing work.  

They have some good proposals for gateway treatments.  They sponsor a Porch Fest in the neighborhood, but I don't see how that will help the business district ("Adams Morgan PorchFest will feature more than 45 bands," WTOP-radio) as it's more of a community event.

But I don't think they've been very good at thinking more broadly about promoting the business district, not just the interests of particular businesses ("Food truck issue revisited," 2013), and haven't necessarily been good advocates for urban design ("Five examples of the failure to do parks and public space master planning in DC," 2021), such as the Columbia Road Plaza matter.

To be fair to the AMP, it's tough to develop retail in DC, especially for Adams Morgan as the city invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the DC/USA (Target) shopping center in nearby Columbia Heights ("Where's the there? To get visitation to neighborhoods there must be destinations worth visiting," 2013). 

And there are multiple nearby competitive commercial districts, including for night life too such as Dupont Circle, U Street and 14th Street,  and Downtown and Georgetown are pretty close too.

Every neighborhood wants its retail district to be thriving, but there aren't enough residents to support that many retail districts across the city.

One possible solution.  I think that the entertainment establishments could do say a 1% to 5% tax surcharge on checks, to generate the revenue necessary to pay for additional police support at night ("No way! Baltimore Downtown Partnership says crime declined when they added patrols").  

I don't know what the gross sales tax revenue is on the entertainment establishments in that district, but it's probably enough.  The same could be done in Georgetown, on H Street, U Street, etc., as needed.

Sure the businesses will complain, especially in the pandemic environment.  But most patrons won't notice or care about slightly higher checks.  And the people generating the demand for extra security would be the ones paying for it.

Colorado allows a similar kind of surcharge, theoretically a "historic preservation surcharge" which they say isn't a tax, for Denver's Larimer Square district and Union Station ("Public improvement fees as sales tax add ons," 2016, "What's in Store for Larimer Square, Denver's Most Historic Block?," Westworld).  It's 1% for Larimer Square and 3% at Union Station (retail sales are lower).  If we knew what the sales tax revenues were in Adams Morgan, we could figure out the right rate.

The AMP BID was re-approved.  But I'm sure that such ideas weren't floated as part of the re-approval process ("D.C. renews Adams Morgan business improvement district but urges change," Post).  From the article:

The Department of Small and Local Business Development (DSLBD) also urged the nonprofit Adams Morgan Partnership to “very seriously” consider calls by members of the business community to overhaul the BID’s governance, including making changes to the bylaws. ...

Critics said the nonprofit organization under Stavropoulos and Executive Director Kristen Barden operated with too much overhead expense and too little transparency or accountability. Critics also accused the BID of devoting most of its energy and funding to programs, such as the use of subsidized police officers for late-night security, that mostly benefited businesses along 18th Street NW on weekend nights. 

 Several questioned whether the benefits of the BID were worth the additional tax burden. Lapan — whose business is moving to Union Market for reasons that have nothing to do with the BID — said the organization should develop more sophisticated ways of measuring the benefits of its programs for neighborhood businesses.

My experience with these processes in DC is that they aren't particularly evaluative or aimed at generating iterative improvements.

Another priority should be fixing whatever problems there are with holding Adams Morgan Day ("Events as drivers of activity for traditional commercial districts").

But doing a surcharge to fund the night time police presence and using the bulk of the BID fees for business development, public space management, and improvement could go a long way towards assuaging problems.