Chinatown Split Over Business District

By Nick Pinto
POSTED NOVEMBER 2, 2007

With its economy still hurting six years after the World Trade Center attacks, Chinatown is desperate to lure visitors back to its shops and restaurants. But a proposal to tax business and property owners in order to create a Business Improvement District to fund street cleaning and other improvement projects is stirring controversy, and revealing hidden fault lines in the community.

Both sides say the very future of the historic neighborhood is at stake.

Leading the push to form a BID—an organization much like the Alliance for Downtown New York and some 50 other business districts in the city—is the Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corp. The Partnership runs the neighborhood’s Clean Streets program, funded in 2006—a year after the organization began—with $5.4 million from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. The Partnership hired two dozen street cleaners and the director, Wellington Chen, estimates it has removed more than 5.5 million pounds of trash from Chinatown, filling more than 220,000 garbage bags.

Next June, however, the LMDC’s outright grant runs out. Future funding will be conditioned on a 20 percent contribution from the community itself. Unless the Partnership can find a way to get Chinatown’s landlords and business owners to buy into the street cleaning program, it will end, and so will one of the major reasons for the Partnership’s existence.

Chen argues that if Chinatown wants to reinvigorate itself and bring tourists and commerce back, it will have to help itself.

“There is a Chinese saying that you cast a brick to get back jade,” Chen said. “You have to give something up to get something greater in return. If we can come together to pay for clean streets and other improvements, people will come to Chinatown to shop and eat.”

For Chen, a Chinatown BID would also mean a seat at the political table for the underrepresented Chinese community. Chinatown residents often feel neglected and marginalized by city government, and a BID could change that, Chen believes.

“When you have a BID, the Mayor is required to send a representative to your meetings on a monthly basis,” he said. “So is the Comptroller. So is the Borough President. It’s about getting your fair share. Why wouldn’t you want to create a voice that the city has to listen to?”

But critics say that a Business Improvement District, which levies a surtax on landlords (an average of about 6 percent of assessed property, which can be passed on to tenants if their lease allows it) will only exacerbate Chinatown’s financial woes.

“Chinatown's small businesses are just scraping by as it is,” said Jan Lee, a vocal critic of the BID initiative who owns an antique store on Mott Street and whose family owns several buildings in the neighborhood. “If you start taxing them a third time, on top of federal and state tax, they’re going to fold.”

Lee thinks Chinatown would be better served if the Partnership’s influential board of directors solicited donations or persuaded city leaders to contribute to maintain the program. Instead, he thinks, the Partnership is trying to get a BID approved without the community realizing what it is signing on for.

“This is a power struggle,” said Lee, who was active in defeating a similar drive in 2002. “You’ve got this group hovering over Chinatown who want to increase their power and give more power to landlords. Once they tell everyone what’s actually involved in a BID, they’re going to meet a lot of opposition.”

Lee points to the composition of the Partnership’s board of directors, which includes bankers and real estate developers, as evidence that it favors the interests of powerful landlords at the expense of residents and small business owners.

So Lee is doing his best to rally the opposition. The scion of one of Chinatown’s oldest families, he knows the neighborhood well, and is collecting signatures, building by building, block by block, in opposition to the BID.

But the Chinese community is historically reluctant to get involved in politics, making it harder to organize the opposition, Lee said.

“In Confucian society, the government is your father’s father, and you never question your father,” Lee said. He warned that the added tax—passed along to merchants—would be death to many small businesses, and give chain stores a greater foothold in the neighborhood.

Basic details of how a Chinatown BID would work are still missing, such as the boundaries of the district and the rate of the surtax. “We’re still at the embryonic stage of the discussion,” Chen said. “We’re really just beginning.”

Though they acknowledge the success of the cleaning program, community leaders like Justin Yu, vice chairman of the board directors of Confucius Plaza and the head of Lin Sing neighborhood association, say there is too little information about the plan to know if it will solve Chinatown’s problems. “Whether you need a BID to do this kind of work is still an open question,” he said. “We need to brainstorm within the community and talk about it.”

BID supporters are required to hold at least two public meetings in the community. Once they have submitted a binder demonstrating their outreach and the support of the community and elected officials, the Department of Small Business Services will move to enact the legislation needed to incorporate the BID.

As BID supporters go forward, they will have to contend with the complex and diverse nature of the community. Political power in Chinatown is largely vested in the dozens of “associations” that act as chamber of commerce, social club, credit union and insurance cooperative all in one.

The largest and one of the oldest of these is the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, whose president, Eric Ng, is known unofficially as the Chinatown Mayor. Ng is cautious in discussing the BID, and refused to join its steering committee. “We have to stay neutral on this issue,” he said, adding that he has doubts about the Partnership’s ability to represent all of Chinatown.

Across Chinatown on East Broadway, Jimmy Cheng, a leader in the community of more recent immigrants from Fujian Provence, said he is also dubious. Cheng said a BID of some kind is a good idea, but he gives the current proposal little chance of success because of Chinatown’s internal divisions.

“Chinatown is not only one community,” he said. “The old generation of Chinatown comes from Guangdong and Hong Kong, and they have a problem with the new immigrants from Fujian.”

Cheng thinks it might be possible to create collective beautification groups at a more local level. He is currently organizing a BID-like organization for the Fujianese businesses on his block.

“Those people listen to me because they know me, and I’m from their community,” he said. “People are ready to rely on the people they know, but not everyone in Chinatown is your friend. How can you rely on them?”

Many small business owners interviewed said they are not aware of the BID debate. Opinions are mixed among those who do.

Charlie Chong, owner of the Singapore Cafe on Mott Street, said he would welcome a Business Improvement District. “We have to do something to keep the streets clean and to attract customers,” he said.

In a souvenir shop down the block on the corner of Pell Street, owner Lisa Huang is less enthusiastic. “The extra cleaning now is great, but if it went away, it wouldn’t be such a big deal,” Huang said. “We don’t need a BID, we need the government to issue more tickets and enforce the law. Our rent has already doubled in the last few years. The BID will just make it worse. We might have to move our business.”

City officials are waiting to see how the debate plays out in the Chinese community, and Community Board 3 is waiting for the Chinatown Partnership to submit a proposal.

City Councilman Alan Gerson, whose district includes Chinatown, said the neighborhood needs a street cleaning program, but he’s not sure whether it should tax business owners or be more like the Soho Partnership and other neighborhood organizations that fund their work with voluntary donations. Gerson hasn’t yet seen the consensus needed to make a BID work.

“We’ll see what happens in the next few months, though,” he said.

For his part, Chen is still confident he can bring the community around. “Everyone says, ‘Oh, Chinatown is so disorganized and divided among itself,’ but if it’s the right thing to do, this community comes together,” he said, adding that the real question is whether it can happen in time.

“The only way to keep the community alive is to increase business,” Chen said. “Making a BID is the way to make sure that our culture, our businesses, and our history have a fighting chance.”

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