As part of our 30th anniversary, the NoHo BID team has been diving deep into the history of our organization – our predecessor organization the Concerned Citizens of Broadway, the BID formation effort and process, and how the NoHo BID came to be. We weren’t sure exactly what we’d find, but in all of our research, one thing continues to come up time and time again: the NoHo BID truly was a labor of love by all involved, but without our founding Executive Director, Harriet Fields, it may not have been possible to form our organization.
As we talk to neighborhood old-timers – our founding board members, long-standing businesses, residents – Harriet’s passion, drive, and push were what stands out to folks. They remember her drive and enthusiasm to make the BID happen. Josh Pickard, a founding board member, former resident, and longtime business owner with NoHo Hospitality Group recalls that “when Harriet wanted you to do something, she just had a way of pushing you until you said yes.”
After moving to Bleecker and Broadway in 1982 after raising their children in the suburbs, Harriet and her husband Richard moved to NoHo. Harriet immediately took an interest in working to improve the neighborhood, and by the late 80s, she and other neighbors had formed the Concerned Citizens of Broadway. The goal wasn’t necessarily to form a BID, but to address the quality of life issues that plagued our area as it transitioned from the gritty, post-industrial environment into a more diversified hub of the arts, shopping and fashion, nonprofit and creative offices, and other uses. At the time the Concerned Citizens of Broadway was founded, the neighborhood was still filled with nightclubs, still home to more manufacturing and industrial uses, and many residents felt that City services had not caught up to the growing population of families and seniors. The artists that had partied in NoHo since the beginning of the loft movement were growing older, and wanted to make sure that the neighborhood served them and their needs as much as it served revelers.
The mission quickly grew from a general community-improvement focus to a full scope of clearly defined goals and work. They worked to get planters and trees in the neighborhood, organized efforts to clean the streets, hosted neighborhood events, and did all they could to support NoHo. The group carried an almost DIY ethos to the Concerned Citizens of Broadway. “Techies we were not, but spirited we were. Harriet spoke from her gut and dressed like a rockstar,” remembered Lizzie Burke, a founding board member, NoHo resident, and longtime friend of Harriet. Kimberley DeAngelo, one of Harriet’s granddaughters also recalled that “the small but mighty woman often did what others thought were impossible, like being the first person ever to get a permit to shut down Broadway from 8th Street to Houston, and served as the voice of the neighborhood, championing the local businesses and spearheading efforts to preserve and cultivate NoHo’s culture and DNA.”
It soon became clear, however, that something more formal than an all-volunteer neighbor group would be needed to accomplish the goals of the Concerned Citizens of Broadway. In announcing their effort, they said it plainly: “We are the concerned citizens of Broadway… We are young mothers and fathers taking our children to school. We are artists who gather energy from this city. We are senior citizens who have always belonged to this neighborhood. We are business people who have late hours. We need police visibility and protection. We need clean and beautiful streets. We need repaired streets. We need to make ourselves heard. We are New Yorkers and we want our City clean and safe. We have applied for a Business Improvement District.”
In 1992, the BID formation effort was officially launched, and quickly grew into a neighborhood-wide effort. By 1994, an article in the Villager noted that the effort had, “support from New York University, the National Audubon Society, the Public Theater, and businesses ranging from McDonald’s to Tower Records, Urban Outfitters to Eastern Mountain Sports, The Village Garden to NoHo Star, the Time Cafe to the Silk Building. Residential buildings such as 250 Mercer St. and 77 Bleecker have also given support.”
After three years of work, the BID was approved by the New York City Council, and was finally signed into law by Mayor Rudy Giuliani on July 23rd, 1996, with an assessment of $350,000. By fall, the NoHo BID was scaling up its services. David Goldberg, CEO of StreetPlus, who still provides our cleaning services, remembers undertaking, “a three week blitz of the neighborhood. We were out there every single night removing decades of tags on buildings, trying to stamp out graffiti as much as we could.”
It wasn’t just clean and safe, but helping to make NoHo a vibrant, fun neighborhood with a sense of identity that Harriet did for the BID. “Her passion for NoHo was contagious,” said founding board member Dan Hochstadt. That translated into a wide-ranging suite of BID work, with the organization doing everything from ArtWalks to holiday lighting, fundraising for and installing Bishop Crook’s lightposts, and installing public art. The BID also tirelessly advocated for the neighborhood in every way possible. Whether it was representing the neighborhood the complex landmarking processes, conducting zoning studies as the neighborhood began to suffer under the old manufacturing zoning, or successfully advocating to DOT to repair the cobblestones streets, Harriet and the BID were there.
From the first days of Concerned Citizens of Broadway, through the formation, and into her eighteen years as Executive Director, we also heard time and time again that Harriet had a way of getting people involved. Funnily enough, almost nobody could recall how they actually met her, but everybody remembered that once they had, they were all of a sudden deeply involved in the organization’s work. That said, it wasn’t a one-woman effort by any means. While Harriet may have been the spark at the center, other neighbors, like Linda Lipay of Shulsky Properties, were similarly passionate about working for our community.
As we reflect on thirty years of service, the deep-rooted, community-driven nature of our BID stands out to us the most. The ground-up passion for this vibrant little slice of the City still drives our work. Whether it’s hosting a business mixer, helping neighborhood stakeholders navigate policy, solving a trash issue (and trust us, there’s endless ones of those to go around), planting flowers, or bumping into a neighbor on the street, the ethos of the NoHo BID remains the same as ever – to provide clean and beautiful streets, to protect quality of life, to promote economic and cultural vitality, and to make NoHo a great place to live, work, and play.
