Strengthening Your Downtown Night Time Economy

Nur is an associate at Larisa Ortiz Associates

Lower East Side is a popular night-life hub in NYC

Night time economies are typically characterized by business done between the hours of 6pm and 6am. This includes a large range of economic activity taking place in food and drinking places, entertainment centers like cinemas, theaters, comedy clubs, sports and recreation facilities, and even retail stores. While these are typically labelled core night time economies, there are additional non-core night time economy sectors that you might less likely be aware of including transportation, health care and infrastructure. Around the world, many downtowns and cities are seeing an overall growth of businesses operating at night and are therefore taking proactive measures to strengthen those economic sectors that help promote the sustainability of the area.

The importance of sustaining your night-time economy

Opponents of the concept however, including residents and business owners alike, have negative perceptions of the crime and disorder that night time economies are supposed to bring. Many fear alcohol-fueled violence on the streets and heightened underage drinking offences, and as a result, higher spending on policing, emergency services and law enforcement. These potential problems of crime and violence, however, have increasingly been shown through research to be easily overcome by numerous other benefits brought by night time economies, including increased employment opportunities, increased footfall and sales for businesses from extended business hours, extended overnight visitor stays, and ironically, even improved crime and safety. In fact,a report found that a more diverse night time crowd in Belfast City not only impacted footfall but crime & anti-social behavior and perceptions statistics.

London, UK shows it has a strong Night Time Economy.

In the UK, night time economies has been estimated to value up to 27% of total town and city center turnover and between 5-10% of overall employment figures. In London, the nation's most populous city, that figure is even more impactful with 1 in 8 people employed in the night time economy. Night time footfall across a number of city centers in the UK has also been found to have outperformed figures captured during the day.

Meanwhile in Australia, a similar contribution was reported by night time economies to job creation and revenue. Between 2009 and 2013, night time economy sales increased by 20% from $90 billion to $108 billion, even higher than the broader Australian economy growth of 14% in the same period. In addition, the night time economy in Australia employs over 1 million people nationwide.

Other studies have also found that night time economies increase the vibrancy of cities through increased access to businesses, services and entertainment for residents and visitors, and promotes and markets local cultural venues that are typically only open in the day and inaccessible to most of the working population. For smaller downtowns and cities, night time economies can go so far as attracting and retaining the younger Millennial population seeking nightlife options in their place of residence, and this might even prevent a brain drain in the local workforce.

Strategies to boost the night time economy

London's Night Czar Amy Lame and Mayor Sadiq Khan

These measurable impacts of the night time economy in various parts of the world have since led more cities to take on a more comprehensive outlook on managing the night time economy, including establishing offices or commissions of the downtown night life. Many cities in Europe have taken this on including London, whose Mayor formed the Night Time Commission and appointed Amy Lamé as the city's "Night Czar". Last month,  New York City Council passed a bill allowing Mayor de Blasio to appoint a Director of Nightlife to oversee a newly-established Office of Nightlife. Regardless of title, the role of such an office and/or leader is to effectively bring together various stakeholders in the night time economy before planning and implementing a suite of strategies that will tie together all of a city's retail, cultural, entertainment attractions. In a way, these Night Mayors are really the downtown's "place managers". Their greatest task of course is to convene all of the unsung night time heroes who work to keep downtown alive and safe at night, from business owners, waiters and bartenders to security staff, police and sanitation workers. Every voice needs to be heard in the planning conversations in order to ensure the night time economy is sustainable.

Some strategies that Offices of Night Life across the world have implemented to boost the night time economy include: 

1. Coordinating extended retail and cultural institution opening hours - whether annually, bimonthly, or weekly. 
2. Implementing quality urban design features along nightlife corridors - lighting, CCTV cameras, ground floor transparency
3. Maintaining a robust night-time program that converges with business hours - light festivals, outdoor music performance, cultural events
4. Conducting a liquor law review to ensure appropriate businesses are able to serve drinks late at night
5. Creating a new or building upon an existing cultural quarter to serve as a new hub of night life

These strategies, however, must be supported by a slew of other more complex actions that are critical to ensuring a safe, viable and sustainable night time economy. Sanitation procedures must be managed and well-coordinated in order to protect the amenity of local residents and businesses without disrupting the flow of night time festivities. Garbage pick-up times, for example, may need to be revised on nights where businesses are open late and a light festival is expected to take place with over a thousand participants roaming the streets.

Public transit authorities and local cab companies also need to be in close coordination with entertainment venues and bars to ensure that late night revelers are able to travel safely before and after spending time downtown. In addition, police authorities and public safety partners must be aware of business hours and night time programs and be prepared to delegate personnel to core areas of night time economies. 

Late night business operation licenses must also be carefully granted to businesses that can demonstrate appropriate safety measures, including the ability to disperse patrons quickly and quietly when the premises closes so as not to have an adverse impact on neighbors. If the downtown does not currently allow mobile food trucks to operate in the night, it may be a good idea to extend the licenses and permits to allow for such businesses to operate late into the night so as to ensure a diverse offering of food and drinking places for patrons. 

How to know if your night time economy is successful?

Sydney produces an area profile sheet annually
to track the progress and impacts of its late-night
management stategies

London and many other cities around the world that have adopted comprehensive strategies to boost their night time economies have also begun to measure the impacts of their actions. For them, the success of a night time economy not only depends on the ability to attract a diverse range of people to a variety of activities at night, but also the ability to increase sales and tourism receipts downtown.

The easiest ways to measure these are of course total sales figures, employment statistics, visitor rates, and pedestrian counts (comparing night time figures to daytime figures, or year-on-year changes). Town centers in the UK have also taken a step further to measure qualitative impacts of their night time management plans by surveying customers and making social observations of the types of street activity and behaviors that take place during the night.

After all, monitoring and managing the process of your downtown's night time plan and strategies is a critical step in the process to ensuring long-term success of your downtown night time economy.

Creating a successful open street

Nur is an associate at Larisa Ortiz Associates

Last month, I got up on a beautiful Saturday afternoon to the sound of loud, popular music from a neighboring street. As I followed the music, I was brought to Tompkins Avenue in the residential neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where I was faced with gridlock traffic. Every car was being rerouted to Gates Avenue because, as it turns out, Tompkins Avenue was closed to vehicles for the annual Tompkins Avenue Merchants Association (TAMA) Summerfest.

TAMA Summerfest is a local open streets event organized in partnership by local Bridge Street Corporation and Tompkins Avenue Merchants Association, and this year it was in its 4^th year running. Since its inception in 2013, the open streets event has more than doubled in size from only covering two blocks between Hancock Street and Putnam Avenue to a full four blocks between Hancock St and Monroe St.

All over the country, Open Streets programs have sprang in numbers from only 10 of such programs a decade ago to over 70 by the end of 2011. In New York, we call it 'Weekend Walks' – multi- block, multi-day events on commercial corridors supported by NYC Department of Transportation. They also entail closing traditional streets to automobiles and converting them into temporary public spaces for pedestrians and cyclists. As with other types of public spaces, a variety of activities is often programmed to occur on the street, for example, musical performances and catwalk shows on Tompkins Avenue. These programs often attract local residents in the neighboring areas but also increasingly attract visitors from much farther away, which might result in higher-than-normal foot traffic for local businesses lining the street.

However, as I found at TAMA Summerfest, the activities programmed on the street only work best for businesses when:

1. They relate to the services and goods already available at adjacent storefronts

I sat along Tompkins Avenue during the Summerfest observing users of the street and found that food vendors out on the street had a very organic relationship with the local bars and wine stores. The products offered were complementary so as visitors walked away with snacks in hand, they would venture slowly over to Bed Vyne Brew to get a cup of sangria, wine, or soda.

In addition, many of the established businesses on Tompkins Avenue were also active street vendors during the Summerfest and were creating physical outdoor extensions of their already existing or soon-to-be storefronts. As a result, many customers were seen venturing further into storefronts after perusing the small selection of products on display out on the street.

In fact, a study of open streets programs by Hipp et al, 2012, in St Louis supports this observation. 73% of participants in an open streets program in St Louis had spent money at a nearby business and 68% became newly aware of a store/ restaurant. These findings certainly bode well for the merchants on Tompkins Avenue.

2. Sprinkled throughout the corridor and not just concentrated on one end or another

Overall, areas along the street that were punctuated with a hub of activities found visitors lingering for longer periods of time. From my observations, I noticed parents would browse products in store windows while their children played in the bounce castles, and younger women were getting their nails done outdoors as their spouses finished their beers. 

In the same study of open streets in St Louis in 2011, each participant reportedly spent an average of 108 minutes on the route, which might have translated to increased expenditure at nearby businesses. 

However, on Tompkins Avenue, there was a distinctly inactive zone at the intersection of Madison Street (see diagram above). This was a result of no programmed activities in that area, aside from one vendor selling mobile phone covers. Not only was the product offered not complementary to the Chinese food stall behind it, it was sitting isolated from all the other activities on the street. Businesses such as Calabar Imports, a specialty home goods and furnishing store, located across from the Chinese take-out restaurant, did not appear to benefit from cross shopping as a result of the inactive zone. It's therefore important to ensure that an even spread of activities and street vending occurs along the open streets route to avoid a dip in vibrancy in the public space that might affect the foot traffic to the few businesses located around an inactive zone.

Aside from this single inactive zone, however, the Summerfest on Tompkins Avenue appeared to be a lively event that showcased local businesses on the corridor (new and existing!) and that seemed to work on the whole as a public space. There were pedestrians, cyclists, skaters and even parents with strollers throughout the corridor that afternoon. Merchants were interacting with customers in the open space, promoting products and services offered on a regular basis, and ultimately ensuring a return visit was in the works.

The 0.25 mile open street on Tompkins Avenue certainly had all the features recommended to encourage local economic and community development. Local businesses were set up as active street vending participants and the program was organized in partnership by the local merchants association and not-for-profit Bridge Street Corporation. Finally, the free public activities including the NY Public Library mobile library and music performances were critical in getting local residents to participate on the day itself.

I hope TAMA Summerfest continues to enliven the commercial corridor in my neighborhood for years to come and hopefully this brief social observation study provides an insight to how they might improve the positioning and programming of activities along the corridor in future iterations.