Roles: BID Services Director, Deputy Director
Myrtle Avenue Business Improvement District
The holidays are "the most wonderful time of the year" and these colorfully wrapped trees and illuminated pole decorations help spread cheer across the avenue, all season long.
Lighting installations provide elements of safety and beautification (and in this case, enhancing the holiday spirit) in any space that seeks to engage the public into the evening hours. As BID Services Director I was able to helm the holiday lighting installations that brought three “Welcome to…” signs, 16 skylines and 19 pole decorations across every block of Myrtle Avenue. During this time I re-negotiated our lighting contract (saving us thousands of dollars year over year) while updating and expanding the lighting scheme, to bring even more joy to Myrtle.
The original lights, seen here, were a custom design that were very nice, but very costly. In my role as BID Services Director, I wrote an RFP to find a new lighting contractor in order to save money while improving service during installation and take down phases.
By finding and hiring a new contractor I was able to get lights that were "off the shelf" and at a more competitive price, saving Myrtle Avenue $27k in costs year over year through contract negotiations. I worked with the contractor to get the lights up in time for Thanksgiving and selected a snowflake theme more akin to winter in general, to try and combat late stage holiday fatigue, as these lights remained in place through the new year.
The skylines gave us an opportunity to bring branding and a sense of place to the avenue by creating lights that welcomed people to each neighborhood. Here you see the "Welcome to Clinton Hill" sign that hung in the east end of the district, on the Clinton Hill side. On the west side we placed a "Welcome Fort Greene" skyline and hung a "Welcome to Myrtle Avenue" sign in the corridors center. I worked closely with the lighting vendor and NYC DOT to ensure that our installations met all of DOT's permit, placement, and power standards and invited both groups out to do a district walk to ensure we were all on the same page.
By saving thousands of dollars we were able to expand our lights for the first time to include colorfully wrapped trees in the Plaza. These trees were a hit with residents and businesses calling them out in social media comments, with follower @candydandy83 posting, "Thank you for the cheer ❤️🙏🏽👏🏽."
Another great upside to saving money on our lights meant I was able to get an even bigger tree for the Holiday Tree Lighting event! A 17 foot tall fir tree (above) takes center stage here in Fort Greene Park. The highlight of my year was being the one to flip the switch, illuminating the tree at the culmination of a community wide countdown.
The Myrtle Avenue BID runs along Myrtle Avenue, from Flatbush Extension to Classon Avenue, through the communities of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill.