There’s a turf war heating up in Downtown Brooklyn.
At stake is control of a striving Business Improvement District representing 25 square blocks in and around Metro Tech Center.
The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, a public-private entity created by the Bloomberg administration in 2006 to spur local economic development, is trying to seize control of Metro Tech BID.
The partnership wants to manage the BID’s $2.6 million annual budget, which is raised through a neighborhood property tax and used to promote local businesses and supplement city services.
But, unlike two nearby Downtown BIDs that quietly agreed to partnership takeovers in 2010, board members for Metro Tech BID are split.
A faction, including top brass, refuse to award the partnership a $300,000-a-year contract to run the BID – despite pressure from City Hall and developer Forest City Ratner, which built Metro Tech’s office complex in the 1980s.
The group – including BID President Victoria Aviles – says they’d be breaking the law by approving the contract since there wasn’t competitive bidding. They also say the merger is a blatant conflict of interest because board members pushing it represent Forest City and other developers with seats on the partnership’s boards, too.
“It’s dead wrong to have one group be Downtown Brooklyn’s only voice, and this would set a bad precedent for all city BIDs, ” said Michael Weiss, Metro Tech BID’s executive director.
The partnership is paid $220,000 yearly to run smaller, adjacent BIDs representing Fulton Mall and the Court-Livingston-Schermerhorn streets corridor.
Weiss — who’d lose his $165,000-a-year job through the merger — said the plan would “devastate services” for small businesses and the neighborhood’s growing residential community because the partnership “usually puts large developers’ needs first.”
Founded in 1992, Metro Tech BID represents 165 businesses, 1,500 condo owners and homeowners, and future buyers of 1,000 unsold condos.
Lee Silberstein, a partnership spokesman, said “the current system allows for a bloated and inefficient bureaucracy” and the public is better served if the three BIDs’ resources are merged into a single entity.
But Francesca Sorrenti, a Metro Tech BID board member and resident, said merchants and residents rely on the “hands-on” BID.
“Today, more than ever, there is a need for a Metro Tech BID because of the ever growing residential and small business community …” she said. “Metro Tech BID needs to grow — not be cut or merged.”
The issue gained steam Thursday when Aviles called an emergency meeting to try updating the BID’s conflict of interest policy, so board members from companies with seats also on the partnership’s board can’t vote on the merger.
The policy change, if approved, would kill the takeover plan, but it was put on hold after Forest City lawyers argued it was too vague Forest City officials, including CEO Bruce Ratner, hold seven of the 33 voting board seats at the BID.