Furniture Row Making a Bid for a BID

Los Angeles has Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) centered on autos, fashion and toys. Why not furniture?

That’s the thinking of businessman Walter Marks, who is organizing Furniture Row, a swath of home-furnishing businesses on a quarter-mile stretch of Venice Boulevard that straddles the Culver City-L.A. line.

Marks owns the 11-acre Helms Bakery site, which is home to a cluster of retailers selling antiques, rugs and other interior furnishings. He’s begun talks with the city of Los Angeles about organizing his tenants and other area merchants into a BID to give the area more marketing clout.

“We feel we are a gem . . . but a lot of newcomers don’t know we’re here,” Marks said. “We want to advertise and put up some signage.”

Plans are still preliminary, but Marks said he’d like to see the BID raise an annual war chest of about $250,000 to spend on advertising and promotion.

For those of you who have been snoozing, BIDs are geographically defined business districts where merchants or property owners agree to assess themselves to pay for extra services to improve the area. Los Angeles has 17 BIDS with 27 more in the planning stages, putting it on pace to surpass New York City as the nation’s BID capital.

L.A.’s BID count could be as high as 23 by the end of May. Business communities in Canoga Park, Granada Hills, Jefferson Park, Little Tokyo, Reseda and Studio City currently are in the thick of the balloting process, according to Mike Vitkievicz of the City Clerk’s Special Assessments Unit, the city agency that oversees BID formation. If given the thumbs up by merchants or property owners in those areas, the BIDs would go before the City Council for final approval. Hearings for all six districts already are scheduled for April and May.

A proposed Sherman Oaks BID also is gearing up for a vote and could be on the council agenda before summer, according to Vitkievicz.