A proposed business improvement district for Downtown Honolulu continues to build momentum among business owners and customers alike.
Under a proposal being considered by the Honolulu City Council, the existing Fort Street Mall Business Improvement District would be expanded to encompass an area bordered by Nu‘uanu Avenue, Beretania Street, Mililani Street and Nimitz Highway. More than 2,000 parcels would be included in the district.
“Downtown Honolulu … has been through a fairly rough patch over the past several years,” Councilman Tyler Dos Santos-Tam told the council Committee on Zoning and Planning Monday. “We looked at the Waikīkī Business Improvement District, which has been hugely successful in bringing powerwashing, more security, additional maintenance services to the Waikīkī area, and we’d like to do the same thing in Downtown.”
Bill 51, a measure introduced by Santos-Tam that would establish the BID, sets the district’s preliminary first-year budget at $1.9 million, with more than $1.7 million of that funding coming from assessments on member businesses.
These assessments would be charged at $0.75 for every $1,000 of assessed value of a given parcel, as determined by the previous year’s tax records. The Downtown Honolulu BID website estimates this amounts to about $0.02 per square foot per month.
The majority of the first-year budget — about $1.04 million — would be spent on “supplemental services” such as cleaning and maintenance, hiring security services and the like.
Chris Fong — a senior investment associate at Tradewind Capital and one of the district’s primary advocates — told the committee the district was first proposed following a May 2024 meeting of various Downtown landowners, who agreed that “the future of Downtown was in jeopardy,” because of increased homelessness, crime, retail vacancies and more.
A town hall meeting in January generated overwhelming support from business owners, Fong said, and several others spoke Monday about the need for a BID and the current state of Downtown.
Victor Lim, chair of the Fort Street Mall BID, said all business and property owners on Fort Street support the expansion of the district, explaining that their ability and resources to do more to improve the area have been “handcuffed.”
Sandra Pohl, executive director of the Downtown Art Center, said people are no longer patronizing Downtown businesses because of the “pervasive stench and filth” throughout the area.
University student Taylor Ogata said she has become discouraged from staying Downtown after hours: “I’ll be honest, I don’t always feel safe.
“I feel uncomfortable walking alone or passing through certain streets and I know I’m not the only one who feels that way,” Ogata said.
But committee chair Esther Kia‘āina was unsure how universal support for the BID is.
“Many property owners, ground lessees and businesses who will be subject to the special assessment may not fully understand the economic consequences … of the BID,” Kia‘āina said.
Chu Lan Schubert-Kwock worried that the BID will cause crime to migrate over to Chinatown, and questioned why Chinatown isn’t included in the BID boundaries in the first place.
Honolulu City and County Managing Director Michael Formby said Chinatown’s exclusion was “principally a decision of the community’s themselves,” and that some Chinatown businesses have pushed back on the proposal out of concerns that their properties might be assessed at different rates than those in Downtown proper.
“Chinatown already has a police substation,” Formby said. “It already has both a special district and a historical district designation. I think we can start out, perhaps, by not including Chinatown and then, if it becomes a problem, we can look at an expansion at some point.”
And while several large organizations and businesses testified in strong support of the BID, there were fewer responses from the small businesses of Downtown. Fong said advocates are still in the process of reaching out to all impacted businesses.
The committee postponed action on the proposal in order to give more time for mandatory public meetings for property owners. Fong said Town Hall meetings will be held Aug. 12 and 14 at Pickles at Forté for further public discussion.
Aloha State Daily reached out to Fong and Lim for comment.
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