The business improvement needs to happen! Seeing what was done in Livingston it would be a huge win. The Morris Avenue district especially needs this, the buildingings are ill placed and unkept except for a select few. There seems to be nothing but a few long standing businesses and perpetually vacant locations.

I moved to springfield almost 3 years ago and live near the Morris Avenue district. Coming from NYC, I was excited to be within walking distance to commercial businesses, hoping for a coffee shope, yoga studio, market etd., but I was immediately disappointed at the shuttered businesses and disrepair of the buildings. The BID efforts may encourage me not to sell and move elsewhere, as up to this point, we have been looking for a way out of town. I want my family to have a town to be proud of and aesthetically, Springfield is an eyesore. Hopefully we'll see changes soon!!!

Heather, I totally agree!! You do have the Overpriced NYSports fitness in the shopping center but otherwise nothing but little take out stores, empty store fronts and gives the appearance of a run down town for anyone going thru town on bus or via car.

I do have to give a "shout out" for McGlynn's Irish pub/restaurant which still does great business despite its location. :)
Great Irish Food Fare and American Cuisine as well!

i get no break from my tax obligation as a springfield citizen and i could care less how prestigious baltusrol is. they owe just like any other business. case closed. if they dont like it thats just the way of the world of taxes. i dont like taxes noone does but i do pay my fair share. noone should be exempt from taxes no matter what the excuse.

Marilyn Eisenberg
I have lived in Springfield 21 years, and always wished we had more of a town or village atmosphere such as Maplewood, Summit. It is though very important the residents of our town would support the business.
So many of the smaller stores on Mountain Ave. have come and gone.
Hopefully we will see improvements start to take place in the near future.

The question shouldn't be whether or not Baltusrol should be part of the BID, it should be why weren't they included from the start.

For the purpose of clarification, would Mr. Fernandez please post an explanation of how the money for the BID is raised? I mention him since Shehady stated that he spearheaded the program. If one of the other TC members or even Ms. Lippman wants to, that's fine. But the public should know where the money will come from so they can understand the process.

Shane, you are playing the role of good soldier very well for the mayor. It's interesting that whenever the posts of those accused of being Shehady (Anthony D, B Freeman, etc.) don't appear for a while you to post a response that sounds very much like theirs. Well, at least you do it under your own name, I'll give you credit for that. But in regard to my post, there are many people who read this particular article and didn't know about the previous information and aren't as technologically adept to try and retrieve that info. I didn't think my question was out of line and was just asking for additional information, so don't read into things just because I post them. Unless there's a reason to be concerned with explaining how the BID works.
The simple answer to where the money comes from is that it is through specific tax paid by the businesses in the BID areas.
The problem I have with the BID is businesses are having a tough enough time these days and they'll end up just passing along the cost to their customers, which means the public will end up paying for it in the end. And Baltusrol does make scholarship donations, but most of it is from the Mayor's Day tournament and that's after they charge about $400 per person to play. Most businesses in town would probably be willing to give out scholarships under the same type of scenario. For as much as I like Baltusrol, they shouldn't get special treatment or be excluded from the BId.

Look what they did to the echo plaza. That place was empty for years, including the office building. A new company purchased the property, fixed it up at now it's thriving. Even with a bad economy. I am tired of the excuses or being told we will never a have center like Westfield , Millburn or Summit. We should have better. The residents have been crying for it for years and nothing. Enough of the excuses ! Tear it all down and do it better then anybody else ! Just do it !

Shane, you're smart enough to know that when the property owners incur additional costs they will simply pass it along to their tenants, and the public ultimately gets to foot the bill on one level or another. As you said, simple economics dictates things, so if the property owners are going to have to pay more then in order to maintain the same level of income they will have to charge more just to break even. The BID process is a tax on the property owners pure and simple. I'm not saying its a bad way of addressing this, but let's be fair and call it what it is. And given the amount of money that will be collected, even if Baltusrol were to pay $30,000 themselves, it will take a long time to accrue enough money to make a difference downtown.
I have always believed the answer was to encourage the property owners to invest in their properties with the ability to build another 2 floors higher so they could generate additional revenue and make their investment worthwhile. The TC was very close to doing that in 2008 before the economy collapsed. Without the economic collapse, I honestly believe we would have seen progress by now.