Commissioner Damian Pardo seeks to boost the economic prospects of West Grove businesses with a new marketing initiative.
On Grand Avenue between Plaza Street and Douglas Road Miami District 2 Commissioner Damien Pardo’s office spent a few thousand dollars on new signage to give the West Grove’s small business owners a marketing boost.
Strapped to lamp posts on the sidewalks, roughly a dozen blue banners welcome passing motorists to the “Little Bahamas Business Corridor.”
The signs represent a large chunk of the $10,000 that Pardo’s office set aside for the initiative, which some are calling a BID light – a scaled-down version of a “business improvement district” which collects additional taxes and fees from property owners and merchants to pay for beautification projects, maintenance and promotional campaigns.
“Our commitment is to put forward the initial capital to help create the economic vitality that West Grove residents and business owners want to see flourish,” Pardo told the Spotlight. “They feel they have been neglected and have not been provided the resources.”
But the Little Bahamas Business Corridor, despite the banners, is a long way from becoming a semi-autonomous city board like the Coconut Grove Business Improvement District, which encompasses the Grove’s central business core.
At least, not until more aspirational entrepreneurs can set up shop and survive along the desolate commercial stretch of Grand Avenue in the West Grove, which was rechristened Little Bahamas via a city resolution championed by Pardo’s predecessor, Ken Russell, in 2022.
The current crop of West Grove commercial landlords and merchants, which recently shrank with the closing of artisanal craft store The Polished Coconut, cannot afford to pay the additional taxes that would result from expanding the boundaries of the current BID or forming a new one, Pardo’s community liaison Javier Gonzalez said.
“Let’s suppose they did establish a Little Bahamas BID. If they have a budget of $500,000, now everyone has to pay toward that,” Gonzalez said. “Each business would have to fork over money that they don’t have.”
The Coconut Grove BID generated $2.3 million in revenue and $2 million in expenses at the end of fiscal year 2023 in September, according to a financial audit presented at the BID board’s February meeting. Property owners and merchants paid a total of $654,147 in assessments and $687,071 in parking waiver fees, the audit shows.
In an interview, the BID’s new executive director, Mark Burns, was noncommittal about any future plans to expand into the West Grove, saying he needed to better understand of how such a move would impact existing operations, “both positively and negatively.”
The Little Bahamas Business Corridor has roughly a dozen retailers clustered near the intersection of Grand Avenue and Douglas Road, including a fitness studio, a print shop, two hair salons, a flower store, a fish market and corner convenience store.
Rows of empty storefronts line most of the stretch where banners are displayed, but there are signs of fresh life as well. New additions include Dogtown, a pet grooming and boarding business, Jaimeluis Organic, a handcrafted furniture store, and Judith’s Market, a sidewalk café and gourmet boutique.
Since forming a BID is not in the cards for the foreseeable future, Pardo’s office is tapping its limited district budget to pay for the banners, provide regular street and sidewalk cleanings and hand out decorative lighting to merchants for any landscaping outside their storefronts, Gonzalez said.
The banners will be swapped out throughout the year to commemorate events such as this weekend’s Goombay Festival and holidays like Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.
“The goal is to get the Little Bahamas Business Corridor going so the business owners can take it to whatever level they want to take it to with sweat equity,” Gonzalez said. “If they want to create a BID in the future, they would have a structure in place to make it easier.”
However, Pardo’s office is not spending more than $10,000 on the effort, Gonzalez noted. “We are not going to continue to throw money at it,” he said. “It is not going to be driven by the District 2 office.”
Some West Grove merchants commended Pardo’s effort, but they doubted that the banners and the decorative lighting would jolt economic activity and foot traffic on their stretch of Grand Avenue. Judith Watson, owner of Judith’s Market, recalls telling Pardo before he was elected that the streets and sidewalks need more illumination.
“I close at 7 p.m. because no one is going to park at night in a neighborhood that used to have a bad reputation,” Watson said. “I would stay open later and that would improve my business by 10 percent.”
Grand Avenue’s commercial stretch could also use a dose of master planning, Watson said. “The West Grove could be our version of the French Quarter in New Orleans,” she said. “But [city officials] don’t want to do it.”
However, Watson concedes that she has not explicitly made this suggestion to Pardo or anyone on his staff. Watson also said that she’s not sure she could afford to pay additional taxes and fees to be part of a BID.
Pardo’s initiative came too late for Alicia Kossick, the owner of the recently shuttered Polished Coconut, a store that sold handmade artisanal furniture, clothing and accessories by female designers.
Kossick, a former District 2 commission candidate, declined to comment about why she closed the shop, but she does not think the banners will serve as a neighborhood catalyst.
“I don’t know how much banners will help,” she said. “They can’t extend the BID. I specifically asked for a legislative framework for some type of funding to help businesses.”
Kossick said Pardo and his staff could look at other government instruments that can spur economic growth in the West Grove such as establishing a tax increment financial district, which could tap property tax increases to subsidize new developments.
The commissioner could also attract new businesses by promoting Grand Avenue’s designation as an opportunity zone, a federally designated area that provides capital gains tax breaks to investors that redeploy their profits into projects in depressed neighborhoods, Kossick added.
Pardo and his staff should also work with community leaders, residents and small business owners to draw up an executable plan and vision for how to create economic prosperity for the entire neighborhood, Kossick said.
“We know how to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and get to work,” she said. “As a long-standing business owner in the West Grove, the Polished Coconut’s success was very much driven by the interrelationship with the community and finding ground and respect within West Grove.”
Of course, Kossick’s success was short-lived. In late April, she closed the Polished Coconut seven years after opening the store.
