WESTFIELD – Following last year’s 9-2 city council vote to dissolve the city’s Business Improvement District (BID), the city’s post-BID transition is still ongoing.
“The city is continuing to figure out what we’re capable of picking up of those services and what we’re not and there’s certainly more services that we’re not capable of picking up,” said Peter Miller, Westfield’s community development director.
Miller said that the city has forged a coalition of sorts with Westfield on Weekends (WOW) to continue divying up the duties formerly held by the BID, including marketing for businesses, business development programs and downtown maintenance services.
The city has two initiatives it is currently working on, according to Miller.
“We have a proposal being sent out for beautification and maintenance services in the downtown, basically flower planting and pot maintenance along with some other things,” he said. “That proposal will be advertised for bid later this month and when we receive the proposals back, we’ll have to make a determination about whether we can afford that or not.”
Miller also added that the city’s Community Development Department will be holding a “Best Retail Practices” workshop on March 12 and is still working on securing a site for the program.
“It’s my understanding that WOW is working on the concert series this summer, along with an initiative called the ‘Summer of the Bicycle’,” said Miller, adding that the summerlong initiative will be centered on the bicycle’s importance to the history – and future – of Westfield.
Miller added that he has prepared a survey for property and business owners that will be out by the end of the month to gather their needs and desires relating to public services and market conditions downtown.
“We understand that a number of them are struggling and there are a few of them that have had some success, but winter is always a challenging time,” said Miller. “We’re trying to gather information about what it is we can do on our level that can help the business community.”
Once the surveys are filled out and returned to his office, Miller believes that any implementation of changes and improvements will have to be a grassroots effort.
“That’s something that we learned from the BID and it’s dissolution. An organization isn’t sustainable if it isn’t driven by business and property owners themselves,” he said. “It’s going to be up to them to decide what they want to do as a community, whether it’s all of them or a few of them, but that is something we’ll be happy to participate in discussions with them about.”
