Private Efforts to Clean Up Downtowns May Sweep America : Philadelphia property owners increased their taxes to create a district with safe, scrubbed streets. Many other cities have similar efforts or plan them.

Dressed in bright teal jackets and baseball caps, the people who clean and patrol downtown Philadelphia these days look more like amusement park employees than they do municipal workers.

In fact, if you stop to ask any of them for the shortest path to the Liberty Bell, you will get exactly what you would expect from any Disneyland employee--a smile, a point in the right direction and encouragement that the walk is short.

This is because the 170 workers who carry brooms and walkie-talkies as they patrol the city’s historic center do not work for this debt-ridden city. They are employed by 2,752 downtown property owners, 89% of whom voted to increase their own taxes to pay for services the city cannot afford.

Launched last spring, the Philadelphia Center City District is a pioneering example of how private enterprise has been put to work revitalizing urban cores. In Philadelphia and other cities, privately run municipal authorities have been charged with bringing back to city centers consumers who have been drawn away to suburban shopping malls.

Pros and Cons

By taking advantage of existing state laws that permit authorities to raise taxes to pay for water, sewage and transportation facilities, “special services districts” are being set up to pay for street cleaning and security patrols. In other cases, these districts undertake snow removal or plan street festivals and marketing campaigns.

Proponents say the districts are the “public/private partnerships” needed to combat persistent urban ills and the federal neglect of cities. Opponents consider them private governments that weaken the ability of municipalities to pay for services to the poor and those outside a district’s borders.

“Downtown development of the ‘80s is being replaced by downtown management of the ‘90s,” said Dee Doyle of the Washington, D.C.-based International Downtown Assn. By creating their own service districts, Doyle said, urban businesses can “implement the best principals of shopping center and office park management.”

More than 1,000 of these districts now exist in the United States. Service districts have proliferated in larger cities as federal funding for cities has declined, said Lawrence Houstoun, a New Jersey consultant who has worked with cities. About 40 states now have laws allowing the creation of such districts.

New Jersey got its first such district in 1985 and now has 15. New York has 22 and has plans for 22 more. In recent years, districts have formed in Buffalo, Denver, Dallas, Phoenix and Vancouver. Just last month a district began operations in downtown Houston. More are expected soon in Atlantic City, Baltimore, Chicago and Washington.

Frequent Cleaning

Philadelphia’s is considered a prototype since it serves an entire downtown. In the 80-square-block district, part of a city once known derisively as “Filthydelphia,” every sidewalk and alley is swept five to six times daily by 64 workers who are paid $7 to $8 an hour. Each night the sidewalks are vacuumed. All of them are scrubbed monthly. The district also installed its own spill-proof trash cans.

Six days a week, 40 “community service representatives”--whom district director Paul Levy describes as “a cross between a professional (neighborhood) watch and a walking hotel concierge”--patrol the streets, giving directions to tourists, finding parking for shoppers and alerting police by radio about potential shoplifters or purse snatchers.

Crime in the district is down 12%, compared with 3% citywide, Levy says. He attributes the decline to the unusual cooperation that his district has received from the Police Department and from former Commissioner Willie L. Williams, soon to take over as chief in Los Angeles.

Police respond quickly because the district’s 40-man security force has earned their respect by attending a daily roll call with officers in a shared substation, the first arrangement of its kind, Levy said.

“For officers to be told from the top that there will be civilians in their watch is a major cultural change,” he said.

Williams agrees.

“The center city district is quite a big success. We’ve had a number of police departments from around the world come and examine what we have done there,” he said.

All of this costs $6.4 million a year, an additional 4.5% in real estate taxes for every property owner.

But, although everyone interviewed on the street agrees that the city looks better, some who pay the tax are not impressed.

“It’s cleaner, but there has been no effect on business yet,” said Gene Muchnick, owner of a stereo and television outlet that sits on one of the city’s major shopping strips. “They do a service that should have been done by the city a long time ago.”

Muchnick said the store vacancy rate in his area has risen from 4.3% in 1988 to 17% last year.

Around the corner, Mahmood Hosseine agrees.

“It looks good, but the bottom line is it does not work,” said Hosseine, who owns a consumer electronics store in the middle of the district. Hosseine complains about taxes in the city, which are among the nation’s highest.

“Nobody is trying to do anything to bring people to the city,” Hosseine said. “There are too many empty stores.”

Levy believes the complaints come from an impatient minority.

“We had to start with the basics --clean and safe streets,” Levy said.

This summer, the district will unveil an advertising campaign to coincide with the revival of an old downtown tradition when stores would stay open Wednesday nights.

The district also is turning its attention to the homeless and has commissioned a study to examine how the $37 million a year that already is allocated to five city departments might be better spent.

“What good are clean streets if I got bodies lying in front of my store?” Levy said his clients ask.

But criticism of the funding arrangement persists.

“It’s going to be awfully hard to raise commercial property taxes once you create the district,” said John A. Wilson, chairman of the Washington, D.C., Council, which is considering legislation to create its own downtown service district.

Call for Wider Aid

Although he said he is undecided on whether he will support such legislation, Wilson said he believes that more money is needed for “the general welfare of the entire city, for schools and public health,” and not just for “business development districts where they are only interested in their own little area.

“Dealing with the social and economic problems that exist throughout the city will ultimately improve the business conditions of the city,” Wilson said.

But Levy asserts that those who pay his salary already pay 33% of Philadelphia’s taxes while receiving only 12% of its services. Instead, Levy says, districts like his help all in the region.

“Center cities are the economic engines in the East. Everyone in the cities will be hurt if the economic base is lost,” Levy said.