By:  Hellen Zaboulani

Long Island City’s success is prompting its managing association to seek out an ambitious expansion.  The Long Island City Partnership would like to physically expand its business improvement district and double its annual budget– allowing it to rake in revenues from a wider pool of landlords and offer more services.

As reported by Crain’s NY, on Friday the LIC partnership filed plans with the city to start a roughly seven-month public review to expand its budget and its borders.  The review will then prompt a vote by the City Council, for a final decision.  The association, which currently manages a few dozen blocks near Queens Plaza, Court Square and the Vernon Boulevard commercial strip, wants to widen its boundaries.  It has proposed an expansion which would move out northward toward Astoria along Northern Boulevard, westward to include along the Queensboro Bridge and southwards to cover more blocks by Queens Plaza. The plan would  also include a second expansion to grow the BID to the southeast, so as to include dozens of blocks below the enormous Sunnyside Yards train yard on Skillman Avenue.

“This latest step in the BID expansion process underscores our commitment to fostering economic  growth and community development in Long Island City,” said Laura Rothrock, LIC partnership’s president, in a statement. The plan would allow the BID to more than double its annual budget.  The association’s cleanup and services need to be extended in order  to accommodate the neighborhood’s surging population and foot traffic, Rothrock said.

Currently, the group gets $1 million annually from the annual assessments that the city charges local property owners to cover the BID’s expenses. The Bid also now has projected revenues of $650,000 and $410,000 for two of the proposed new expansion areas. Rothrock said that feedback from the community “has played a pivotal role in shaping the vision for this expansion,”  and vowed “transparency and inclusivity” as the process continues.

Local elected officials have been mulling the expansion since 2021, and have been working to garner support for the initiative.  Representatives from major real estate firms are among proponents of the expansion.  Local City Council member Julie Won seems likely to support the plan, which would provide significant backing, per Crain’s.

Similar to NY’s 75 other local BIDS, the association’s main tasks include services like street-sweeping,  graffiti removal and special events. Some criticize BIDs saying they provide services that the city should be responsible for.  Despite this pushback, some eight BIDs have successfully expanded their boundaries since 2014, as per the city’s Small Business Services Department.

The LIC Partnership itself, is one of those expanded BIDs, having already nearly doubled its initial territory in 2017.  Still, the LIC Bid doesn’t seem like it will run into too much opposition, as last Fall the neighborhood’s community board already voted in favor of the expansion, as reported by the Queens  Eagle.

As per Crain’s, Won will likely be in the position to dictate how the council votes on the expansion.  She  has already hinted on Monday that she will back the expansion, which she said would “meet the needs of rapid growth.”  “Long Island City’s population has grown five times faster than the rest of the Queens and we have had two times the growth of jobs,” Won  told Crain’s. “LICP must continue to be responsive to the community’s feedback and collaborate for a final BID proposal.”