Business Improvement District

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Business Improvement District ( BID ) (also innovation area , real estate and location communities (ISG) , inner-city business districts (INGE) , partnerships to make city, service and tourism areas (PACT) more attractive ) is a spatially clearly defined area in which the Landowners and traders should jointly try to improve the quality of the location through measures that are financed from a self-imposed and time-limited tax. The BID laws of the federal states create the legal basis for BIDs in Germany.

The aim of the BIDs is to maintain the value of the property and to increase sales. For this purpose, the surrounding privatized space is to be made more customer-friendly and additional marketing and services are to be provided. The central principle of BIDs is the independent action of the local actors. It is mostly from them that the initiative to found BIDs comes from. They organize a decision-making process that often takes several years, in which they agree on a measure and financing concept and on a responsible authority that implements the concept over a period of several years of the BID.

This involves measures that go beyond the services provided by municipalities. The financing is provided by the landowners of the BID quarter (in Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, in some cases, also the traders). In a few cases, the municipality provides co-financing.

origin

The idea of ​​BIDs comes from North America (there also: Business Improvement Area , Business Revitalization Zone ); the designation “Business Improvement District” or “BID” is also widespread in Germany.

BIDs were developed in North American city centers in response to increasing competition from shopping malls . One of the advantages of shopping centers over the grown-up city centers is that they have a central management system that ensures a differentiated retail structure, maintains a clean and uniform appearance and coordinates tenant advertising. These properties of shopping centers should also be achieved in city centers and city districts using BIDs. The first BID was established in Toronto, Canada in 1970: Bloor West Village is now considered one of the BID success stories.

Content basics

The initiative to set up BIDs mostly comes from landowners or businesses in a neighborhood. They agree on a measure and financing concept for a spatially delimited, mostly inner-city area and on a responsible body that implements the concept over a period of several years of the BID. A BID comes about through a democratic decision-making process. This is necessary because in a BID all landowners are obliged to pay a BID levy, which is collected by the city and passed on to the BID authority. The Hamburg BID Act, on which the other German BID laws are also based, provides for three stages for the establishment of BIDs: 1. The application for the establishment of a BID by the responsible authority, which has the consent of the owners of 15 percent of the im Requires land located in the BID area, the area of ​​which also comprises at least 15 percent of the total property area of ​​the BID area; When submitting the application, the transport authority must submit a plan of measures and financing as well as a declaration of the duration of the BID; 2. the interpretation of the application documents by the district office over a period of one month; During this time, the landowners have the right to object to the establishment of a BID. If the owners of more than a third of the property located in the BID area or of more than a third of the property area located in the BID area object, the BID cannot be set up; 3. the examination of the application documents by the district office.

Typical fields of action are measures to improve the environment, e.g. B. the redesign and maintenance of public spaces, the removal of graffiti and the improvement of cleanliness. Additional marketing measures are also implemented in many BIDs.

The BID district usually comprises around 50 to 100 properties. The BID budget of the BIDs in Germany is between 150,000 euros and 6 million euros. In New York City, project volumes sometimes exceed US $ 11 million. In the US average, however, the investment sums are usually lower.

A BID is a typical example of a public-private partnership (PPP) in which public law-making and private initiative work together. As a result of the legally legitimized expansion of responsibility for neighborhood development from municipal to private actors, BIDs can be seen as paradigmatic for new instruments of urban governance, which are currently gaining in importance worldwide under the guiding principle of an entrepreneurial urban policy.

advantages

  • BIDs exclude the possibility for free riders to enrich themselves without financial participation (costs) in the success of marketing measures or measures to improve the business environment.
  • The legal basis and the participation of the municipalities authorized by the statutes creates a high level of financial security.
  • Financing security opens up opportunities for longer-term measures.
  • In functioning business districts, the status quo can be secured or the situation can be improved.

criticism

Critics point out that BIDs could only push problems out of the public eye of the shopping streets in inner-city peripheral locations. In addition, there is a risk that the municipalities will no longer be able to adequately meet their actual public services. A further drifting apart of the different quarters in the German cities could be a consequence of BIDs. In Hamburg it is criticized that BID intensifies competition. The existing voluntary associations of traders, for example in the form of associations, have proven themselves and are sufficient. BID is only an instrument for inner-city development, there is still a need for research.

The way to the BID

A state legal basis is required to implement BIDs. It currently exists in Bremen , Baden-Württemberg (since 2014), Hamburg , Hesse , North Rhine-Westphalia , Saarland , Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein .

The law prescribes the respective procedure for setting up a BID. Before a quorum can be carried out, an application must be submitted to the responsible municipality. For this purpose, appropriate preliminary work, in particular the definition of measures, scope of financing, scope and responsibility for the task, must be carried out. A public discussion before the application helps in assessing the chances of approval in the consensus quorum. The period before the application is different, but usually several months to years. After the application, all property owners and tenants are informed. If the maximum number of contradictions is not exceeded (e.g. 33% in Hamburg), the BID can be set up in the statutes and the responsible body can be commissioned to implement the measures.

Legal basis

The 2007 amendment to the Building Code created the legal basis for BID in Germany. In accordance with state law, areas can be specified in which location-related measures are carried out under private responsibility, based on a concept of strengthening or developing areas of inner cities, district centers, residential quarters and commercial centers as well as other for urban development serve important areas. Regulations can be made by state law to finance the measures and fair distribution of the associated expenses. The land law, which falls within the legislative competence of the federal government, now contains an opening clause in favor of the federal states. How the legal situation with regard to a compulsory levy will hold up in the courts remains to be expected. On August 27, 2010, the Hamburg Higher Administrative Court made the first higher court decision on Business Improvement Districts, in which a lawsuit against the Hamburg Business Improvement District was rejected. However, the appeal to the Federal Administrative Court has been approved.

Federal states with a legal basis

All legal bases are documented with background material and information on the HCU Hamburg internet portal (as of April 2015).

Further development of the model

The transfer of the BID model to other urban areas has been discussed in the specialist public in Germany for some time. In this context, the term Housing Improvement Districts (HID) was used to apply the model in residential areas. In autumn 2007, Hamburg was the first federal state to submit a corresponding draft law on the basis of Section 171 f of the BauGB and passed the "Act to strengthen residential areas through private initiatives" on November 20, 2007, which came into force on December 1, 2007. The first HID in Germany was founded in 2012 in Steilshoop in Hamburg-Wandsbek.

Further regularly updated information on the subject of BID and the specialist discussions on private initiatives in urban development with a variety of information sources and literature is available on the "Urban Improvement Districts" website of the HafenCity University research project .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/article205232457/Historiker-warnt-vor-Privatisierung-der-Stadt.html
  2. ↑ http://www.wentzel-dr.de/index.php?id=297&language=1
  3. ↑ http://www.marktquartier.de/Marktquartier.html
  4. ↑ http://www.regionalentwicklung.uni-bremen.de/docs/2010-2_Mossig_Dorenkamp_Malls-BIDs-und-Belebung-der-innenstadt.pdf
  5. ↑ Law to Strengthen District Development through Private Initiative (GQP). (PDF) State Parliament of Baden-Württemberg, accessed on September 4, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Hamburg Higher Administrative Court, file number: 1 Bf 149/09
  7. ^ Urban Improvement Districts
  8. ^ Urban Improvement Districts - A research project of the HCU Hamburg