News
DON'T CALL IT WoHoNoBeCa
March 31, 2010
| It’s not West SoHo, the South Village, or Near the Holland Tunnel. And don’t even call it North TriBeCa! It’s Hudson Square, and its new BID president Ellen Baer is looking to give the neighborhood the recognition it deserves. |
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| The Hudson Square Connection BID (clockwise from bottom left: Ellen, Renee Schoonbeek, Ben Jervis, Madeline Kaye, and Suzy Changar) covers Sixth Ave to the east, Greenwich St to the west, West Houston to the north, and Canal St to the south. It's not your traditional BID, Ellen tells us—it isn’t providing supplementary security and sanitation, but is working to improve the streetscape, adding and enhancing retail, and implementing plans to take the creativity of its tenants out into the neighborhood. The BID so far has a $1.7M budget with legislative authorization to go to $2.5M once they start bonding for improvements. |
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| Ellen says creative people love to be in the neighborhood, noting an influx of new media, architectural, and furniture companies. One of its most well-known is Viacom at 345 Hudson St, and the latest is Writers Guild of America, East at 250 Hudson St. (see story below). The Connection’s initiatives include a marketing campaign to build the neighborhood’s identity; cross promotion among its retail and arts tenants; encouraging movement from the east and west; capital investment to improve the neighborhood’s traffic and pedestrian flow; and building open space for people to sit and engage in programs like poetry readings (the public plaza next to the new Trump Hotel on Spring Street will be the first). |
