Fast-developing East Harlem gets city’s newest business improvement district

May 29, 2025

A unanimous City Council vote established the East 125th Street BID as the 77th such organization in the city, helping East Harlem shed its status as the last Manhattan community district without a BID of its own.

East 125th Street, the fast-developing corridor whose growth has coincided with persistent crime and sanitation issues, now has a new distinction: New York’s newest business improvement district.

A unanimous City Council vote on Wednesday established the East 125th Street BID as the 77th such organization in the city, helping East Harlem shed its status as the last Manhattan community district without a BID of its own. Community leaders who have pushed for it since 2021 hope that the better-funded BID will help them step up efforts to clean up neighborhood streets and make them welcoming for residents and businesses.

The time seems ripe to organize businesses and landlords along the corridor. East Harlem has experienced a building boom since a 2017 rezoning, and the planned construction of the Second Avenue Subway extension, which will terminate on East 125th and Lexington Avenue, is all but certain to incentivize more development. Just this month, city and state officials unveiled plans to permit a 684-unit apartment tower atop the subway’s future terminus.

“It started from a community level, of small businesses and residents just wanting to see better for the neighborhood,” said Carey King, director of the nonprofit Uptown Grand Central, which spearheaded the effort and runs street-cleaning programs similar to what the BID will perform. “And it ends up putting us in a better position when these big things come in, that we need to have a unified voice on.”

Read more in Crain’s here: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/politics-policy/east-125th-street-becomes-nycs-newest-business-improvement-district.