Clean Streets
Even cleaner streets
The largest of our core services, the Partnership’s Clean Team, keeps the neighborhood looking its best. The team removes graffiti; shovels snow; sweeps streets, sidewalks, and the Flatiron Public Plazas; and maintains both Partnership and City-owned assets, including trash cans, tree pit guards, plaza tables and chairs, kiosks, fire hydrants, mailboxes, and bus stops. In the wake of damaged storefronts throughout the district in early June, our Clean Team sprang into action each morning removing graffiti and assisting merchants with clean-up.
What Happens Next:
Our commitment to keeping our neighborhood well-maintained and clean has been made more critical as the City makes fiscal cuts to its sanitation and parks budgets. Our Clean Team members will continue to safely sanitize and disinfect streetscape items and power wash heavily-trafficked areas of the district, which includes opening and closing our district’s Public Plazas and Open Streets.
The Partnership would like to express our sincere appreciation to the dedicated members of our Maintenance, Safety, and Homeless Outreach teams. With their services needed more than ever, they continued to show up, day in, day out, and ensured our neighborhood was taken care of when the city came to a stop. Thanks to their efforts, the district was sanitized daily, meticulously maintained, and carefully looked after, while outreach continued to our most vulnerable population.
Thank you, Team, for all of your tremendous work. This community appreciates all you do.
Public Safety
Here to help
The Partnership’s Public Safety Ambassadors survey the neighborhood providing daily assistance to residents, employees, and visitors. Our dedicated Ambassadors are our eyes and ears, touring the neighborhood each day - rain or shine - and routinely distributing pertinent community information to ground floor businesses and residential building managers.
What Happens Next:
Our Ambassadors will continue to make the rounds in full PPE, assisting those in need, reporting instances of nuisance and disrepair, tracking business reopenings, and monitoring increased outdoor activity on the Flatiron Public Plazas and Open Streets in Flatiron and NoMad.
Streetscape & Public Realm
Putting pedestrians first
Throughout Flatiron and NoMad, the Partnership plants and maintains a beautiful palette of seasonal plantings in tree pits, hanging baskets, the Park Avenue South median malls, and standing planters on the Flatiron Public Plazas. The Partnership maintains, manages, and programs the plazas, and partners with Flatiron Plate and Eataly to offer food and beverage options in these iconic public spaces.
Additionally, the Partnership offers public art installations of various scope and duration throughout the year. In 2019, we welcomed ‘Hippo Ballerina’ by Bjorn Skaarup to the South Plaza and Hou de Sousa’s colorful and interactive ‘Ziggy’ to the North Plaza holiday celebration.
What Happens Next:
We take great pride in the safety and vitality of our neighborhood and will always ensure that our seasonal plantings complement the district’s vibrancy through pops of color and lushness across our district streetscapes. This spring, we expanded pedestrian space along Broadway, opening it to people walking and biking to help mitigate sidewalk crowding, and allow space for fresh air and social distancing. Committed to ensuring pedestrian safety and the recovery of our businesses, the Partnership is working with the New York City Department of Transportation and a consultant team on creative and responsible recommendations on how to transform district-wide curb space for dining and retail during the recovery period.
Marketing, Communications & Business Support
Engagement like never before
A cornerstone of the Partnership’s services is its consistent outreach and trusted assistance provided to neighborhood businesses of all shapes and sizes. The Partnership manages a robust portfolio of digital communications platforms—anchored around FlatironDistrict.NYC, our social media channels, and a weekly email newsletter—that showcase local businesses, share city and neighborhood developments, and highlight key information for merchants, residents, travelers, and employees. Our sponsorship opportunities, print materials, district branding, and public signage convey information to those who work, live, and visit the district.
What Happens Next:
In these uncertain times we need to be a reliable, accessible, and supportive resource for our business community. The Partnership continues to use its communication channels to provide timely and relevant information on COVID-19 preparedness and recovery, as it has since the pandemic’s onset. This includes targeted news alerts, resource pages, business support roundups and other initiatives geared towards keeping our local and remote stakeholders abreast of need-to-know information. The Partnership has convened a retail and hospitality working group to bring businesses and institutions together to help shape individual and collective recovery programs, initiatives, and regulatory guidance. We joined prominent NYC industry leaders to advocate for small business relief via The Blueprint to Save Small Business (#SmallBizSOS).
Programming & Events
Trustworthy community experiences
The Partnership traditionally curates and executes a variety of events and hyperlocal programming that highlight our vibrant business and cultural communities while providing those in the neighborhood with engaging opportunities. Together, we have enjoyed our Flatiron Summer Series consisting of free curated outdoor events, our annual Business Assistance Forum in partnership with Baruch College, our Celebrate Flatiron Partnerships networking event, and our “23 Days of Flatiron Cheer” holiday programming.
What Happens Next:
Large gatherings may not be an option in the near term, but the Partnership is reimagining programming and event-style engagements for our current reality. We look forward to joining the neighborhood in an appropriate and safe manner for our 2020 Annual Meeting & Community Reception this fall.
This spring, our “Feed Flatiron’s First Responders” initiative raised funds to purchase daily delivery orders of 100+ meals to support neighborhood restaurants and feed emergency workers that serve Flatiron and NoMad. The Partnership contributed $20,000 to the program and raised an additional $12,000, allowing us to purchase 3,176 meals from area restaurants. In the months ahead we will continue to innovate with supportive programming to meet the moment.
Economic Data Reporting
Planning for new possibilities
Over the past year, the Partnership has increased its data collection and analysis capacity through new map-based data management software and an anonymized pedestrian counting system. These tools position the Partnership as a growing clearinghouse of district metrics, conditions, and trends. These are regularly broadcasted to the public via Quarterly Reports, Plaza Pedestrian Counts, an Annual Trending in Flatiron Report, yearly Community Survey Report, and a real-time Retail Opportunities Map.
What Happens Next:
The Partnership is working diligently to better understand the evolving impact of the pandemic and subsequent financial recession on the economic underpinnings of the district. This includes surveying ground-floor and upper-floor businesses, estimating return-to-work timeframes, monitoring business closings and reopenings, examining transit indicators, identifying real estate market trends, and collaborating with our partners in City government on both data sharing and necessary regulatory and policy action.
District Expansion
Pushing the boundaries
Our multi-year effort to expand service boundaries of the Flatiron/23rd Street Business Improvement District (BID) into NoMad, including the Sixth Avenue gateway to the west and 20th Street entry to the south, made important strides over the past year. The BID Expansion Steering Committee finalized a district plan, map, and budget, and conducted extensive outreach to local stakeholders through direct mailings, public meetings, and door-to-door canvassing. The Steering Committee is proud to report that its outreach efforts have resulted in the documentation of broad-based support for the BID’s expansion. The expansion proposal now awaits formal public review and legislative approval.
What Happens Next:
The Partnership is hopeful that the BID expansion will be publicly reviewed, approved, and launched over the next twelve months. The expansion will form a more cohesive, clean, safe, and vibrant district, and allow the Partnership to support a greater number of business stakeholders as we recover together. As we await delivering direct services to the expansion area, the Partnership will include expansion stakeholders in both our regular and targeted outreach, promotional services, and advocacy efforts.
Social Services
Lending a hand
The Partnership works with Urban Pathways to provide critical services to individuals and families living without shelter in the district. Professional outreach teams are on duty five days a week – including some late-night and early-morning shifts – in collaboration with the NYC Department of Homeless Services and the NYPD Homeless Outreach Unit.
What Happens Next:
Our homeless outreach and placement services will continue through the pandemic, particularly as the need for nourishment, counseling, and transitional housing increases with the resultant economic uncertainties.