The organization founded on the premise of cleaning up Westwood
village and making it a more attractive place for business will
cease to provide the Village with services in June.
The Westwood Business Improvement District’s charter was
set to expire on Sept. 30. Los Angeles City Councilman Jack Weiss,
whose Fifth District includes Westwood, said he decided against
renewing the BID because of the heated debates over whether or not
the BID met its goals, according to press aide Lisa Hansen.
Services provided by the BID will continue to June of 2003.
“Rather than finger-pointing, the council wants to start
fresh with a new organization,” said Hansen.
A representative of the Westwood Village Community Alliance, who
manage the BID’s operations, could not be reached for comment
Thursday after numerous phone calls.
Weiss held a series of meetings with BID stakeholders and heard
many complaints concerning whether the BID was meeting its goals.
Weiss finally decided it had failed on some levels.
The BID was formed in 1995 to address the needs of the
economically stagnant village, specifically to provide services the
city could not provide adequately, such as street and sidewalk
cleaning and tree-trimming. But it was also supposed to encourage
the development of desperately needed parking as well as marketing
the Village as a good place for investment.
Many of its members said the BID failed on many counts, most
significantly increasing parking spaces in the Village and forming
a coherent, unified vision of what it should be.
“Leadership and management really dropped the ball,”
said Phil Gabriel, board member and owner of Scrubs Unlimited on
Weyburn. “It should never have gotten to the point where the
BID was left to expire,” he said.
Gabriel said the BID provides valuable services and other
features such as the farmer’s market and that it will be
difficult to form a new BID, because doing so will require gaining
back the confidence of village merchants.
“We need some version of the BID … how we put it
together is another question,” said Frank Ponder, board
member and manager of Bel Air Camera.
Village merchants have complained in the past that the BID does
not actively seek out prospective tenants or make an effort toward
“rebranding” the Village as an exciting place to go and
a good business investment.
Though new businesses have moved into the Village since the
BID’s inception, many have also complained there has been
little effort made to encourage a variety of retail stores to move
into the Village. This would hopefully attract more patrons to the
Village and create more foot traffic seen at other outdoor shopping
promenades.
But some believe too much has been expected of the BID since it
is for the most part limited to using persuasion and advocacy to
accomplish goals.
“It’s not God,” Ponder said of the BID.
“The BID has no real power,” he added, saying that
the city of L.A. is slow to act and neglects its commercial
districts in favor of autonomous shopping malls that absorb fewer
resources.
Others on the board of directors believe the BID has failed to
proactively address the Village’s problems.
Gabriel said that any criticism he offered of the BID’s
functions made him the “bad guy,” and that other
members of the board were not interested in change.
Others have critiqued the BID’s assessment method. Since
the BID is property-based, property-owners pay an assessment fee
which goes into the BID’s fund. But according to Gabriel, 80
percent of the property owners make their tenants reimburse them
for these fees. Tenants and property owners have an equal number of
seats on the board despite the fact that tenants contribute more to
the BID fund. Some have called this process undemocratic.