Jamaica Center BID
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September 18, 2020

Our Latest Activities - E-newsletter

Our Latest Activities
Jamaica Center BID spent much of August canvassing hundreds of our local businesses to inquire about their recovery, inform them about the City’s proposed Jamaica Avenue busway, assess internet bandwidth strength downtown, and most importantly, to enroll our local storefront businesses in our new emergency alert system, JBID-Alerts!   

What’s JBID-Alerts? Something very important in our eyes…In early February a portion of the Avenue was shut down due to an alleged bomb threat. Shortly thereafter, Coronavirus began spreading in full force and many businesses suddenly needed to shut down or modify operations based on their business type. In both instances, our staff struggled to efficiently get time-sensitive info to our businesses, due to varying degrees of email, social media or landline connectivity of each business. The lesson learned? In times of emergency, our BID needs a rapid-fire way to communicate with businesses beyond email, store visits, or calls to store landlines. Enter JBID-Alerts! When a business owner or key manager provides our organization with their cell phone number, we can now send up to the minute emergency blasts directly to their cell phone, using a new software powered by Textedly. 

If you’re a business owner within our BID boundaries that would like to be enrolled in this program, please contact Trey Jenkins at [email protected]. We will never share your cell information and we will only notify you with critical information that we feel is time sensitive and important to your business’s survival (read: no junk texts). Property owners—we would also like to provide this emergency alert service to you, building supers and building managers who want to be alerted of downtown emergencies (water main break, fire, etc). Please reach out to Trey Jenkins if you or your building staff wish to enroll in these alerts. We can’t prevent disasters, but we certainly can prepare for them, allowing us as a business community to rebound much quicker!

We also spent August reminding the community to support local businesses. We gave away I LOVE Jamaica Avenue and “Shop Local” postcards to passersbys at the Family Fun Day hosted by the Queens Chronicle and King Manor Museum on August 21. Later that day we joined Elected Officials I. Daneek MillerAdrienne AdamsJames Sanders and Department of Small Business Services (SBS) Commissioner Jonel Dorris for the kickoff of their Advancing Black Entrepreneurship (BE NYC) report. Natasha Morales and Candi Semone of Make Me Over Beauty Bar (166-11 Jamaica Ave) and Henry Arroyo of Henry’s Carrot Cakes (located inside Jamaica Market 90-40 160th) each spoke at the press event about what it means to be a Black business owner and part of the Downtown Jamaica community. Dawn Kelly of The Nourish Spot (107-05 Guy R Brewer Blvd) also spoke at the event on Jamaica Avenue at the location of the Black Lives Matter street mural.  

View the rest of our E-newsletter here!

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