Section I: District Background and Review of Fiscal Year 2012
Activities
A. Neighborhood Needs Assessment
The Fifth Avenue BID provides supplemental security and sanitation servicesand lends assistance to visitors to the Fifth Avenue and 57th Street neighborhood. We also provide a Christmas season tree display at the Pulitzer Fountain and act as an advocate for the district on issues that are important to our members.
Since the district was established in 1993, our work with the New York City Police Department has contributed to a most dramatic drop in street crime as described in the Security section of this report.
The recent "Great Recession" has had minimal impact on Fifth Avenue; vacancies remain low and rents remain high. In a New York Post article written three years ago the district was described as follows:
B. Review of Accomplishments
SANITATION
A. Neighborhood Needs Assessment
The Fifth Avenue BID provides supplemental security and sanitation servicesand lends assistance to visitors to the Fifth Avenue and 57th Street neighborhood. We also provide a Christmas season tree display at the Pulitzer Fountain and act as an advocate for the district on issues that are important to our members.
Since the district was established in 1993, our work with the New York City Police Department has contributed to a most dramatic drop in street crime as described in the Security section of this report.
The recent "Great Recession" has had minimal impact on Fifth Avenue; vacancies remain low and rents remain high. In a New York Post article written three years ago the district was described as follows:
But Fifth Avenue from 49th to 59th street seems immune to the malaise. While many Midtown avenues and streets have canyons of store space up for grabs, Fifth's golden half-mile is full, except for the Brooks site and a tiny space recently abandoned by Sergio Rossi. (NYP, June 2, 2009)
Less than a year later, at 666 Fifth
Avenue, the location mentioned above as "the Brooks site" set a new record when Uniglo announced that it had
signed fifteen year lease for $300 million or $20,000,000 a year which topped
the Gucci lease of $16,500,000 at Trump Tower. And the "tiny space
recently abandoned by Sergio Rossi" has been replaced by a Swarovski
store.
In another summary about our retail space, Cushman & Wakefield reported that once again Fifth "remain(ed) the most expensive shopping strip in the world" topping out at $1,850 per square foot. That was written in early 2011. In 2012, as retail space was becoming less available, the per square foot cost on the
In another summary about our retail space, Cushman & Wakefield reported that once again Fifth "remain(ed) the most expensive shopping strip in the world" topping out at $1,850 per square foot. That was written in early 2011. In 2012, as retail space was becoming less available, the per square foot cost on the
ground floor had risen to $2,750.
On West 57th Street, there is a
different kind of revitalization unfolding. Another New York Post article described a bidding war between
developers:
Like players in a high stakes Monopoly game, (developers) lately have snatched up prime addresses along West 57th Street, . . . aspiring to create a higher rent strip. (NYP, Feb., 27, 2012)
This is an economically strong
district; what it needs is supplemental security and supplemental sanitation so that all of our businesses will
have a customer friendly environment.
B. Review of Accomplishments
SECURITY
When the Fifth Avenue BID plan was
conceived twenty years ago, we had very visible signs of poor security practices within this
district. There were 3 Card Monte frauds operating without interference; there were
pick pocket teams so obviously working the area that Tiffany & Co. produced a
video showing
their modus operandi; and there were illegal street peddlers
selling counterfeit merchandise openly just outside the stores selling those legal
products.
A walk down the Avenue today presents
a vastly different atmosphere than the beginning of the 1990s: the 3 Card Monte games are gone, the pick
pocket teams have mostly dried up and the sale of counterfeit merchandise has
greatly diminished.
This is not to say that there are no
security issues within the district. The relatively new problem of aggressive CD peddlers who intimidate pedestrians
to “buy” their products, is an example of a current criminal activity that we
must monitor and address. In April of 2012 there was a robbery by a CD
peddler that not only illustrates this issue but also perfectly depicts how we work
with local police to curtail these incidents.
A group of Asian tourists approached
one of our security officers in front of 677 Fifth Avenue and informed him that one of them had just been robbed by
a group of three CD peddlers near 53rd Street. After taking a
description and notifying our dispatcher our security officer spotted a Midtown North
police car, flagged it down and they proceeded to the location of the robbery.
Our security
officer spotted one of the robbers hiding behind a food vendor and assisted
the police officers with the arrest.
This kind of cooperative enforcement
become a deterrent when the word spreads among the street people; illegal CD peddling dropped sharply over
the next few months.
The following chart of the seven major
crimes tracked by the Federal Government is a snapshot of the progress made during the last eighteen
years.
FBI MAJOR CRIME INDEX
5TH BID DISTRICT
1993-2012
| 1993 | 2012 | ||
| Felonious Assaults |
24 | 2 | |
| Burglary | 15 | 0 | |
| Grand Larceny |
712 | 44 | |
| Auto Theft |
2 | 0 | |
| Robery | 40 | 3 | |
| Rape | 0 | 0 | |
| Murder |
0 | 0 | |
| Totals | 793 | 49 | -94.8% |
In addition, we assisted over 243,000
visitors to our district and logged 41,352 man hours.
SANITATION
Our BID also provides a high level of
supplemental sanitation services. In FY12, we logged 14,144 man hours of Clean Team projects. As with our
security team, this was a slight decrease in our overall hours but there was no appreciable
change in our level of service. Most of this work centered around the daily routine
of keeping the district clean and of free of overflowing trash receptacles. For the
year we stuffed 101,250 trash bags, removed 392 graffiti tags and, working with our
contractor, provided 572 supplemental truck runs beyond the Sanitation Department's
normal
pickups.
Fiscal Year 2012
Income and Expenses
Income and Expenses
| INCOME: | |
| Assessments |
$2,715,554 |
| Interest |
4,360 |
| Total Income |
$2,719,904 |
| EXPENSES: |
|
| Sanitation |
$680,450 |
| Security |
1,595,646 |
| Holiday Trees |
29,396 |
| Admin Payroll |
242,801 |
| Admin Rent |
21,684 |
| Admin Insurance |
6,486 |
| Audit Fee |
11,253 |
| Fringe Benefits |
126,936 |
| General Office Expenses |
16,590 |
| Equipment & Supplies |
2,217 |
| Travel & Conferences |
4,510 |
| Dues & Subscriptions |
7,798 |
| Depreciation |
8,316 |
| Total Expenses |
$2,754,083 |
