To commercial landlords and business owners, Ralph DiBart is a familiar presence and effective partner in downtown New Rochelle. Some say they could not have opened or renovated their businesses and properties without the help of DiBart and the organization he heads.
DiBart is executive director of the New Rochelle Downtown Business Improvement District, which includes some 300 businesses in its area. In its 11-year history, the BID has emerged as a reaper of state grants to restore New York”™s aging urban buildings and a successful recruiter of private investment in what had been a decaying downtown.
“It”™s a recession,” said DiBart, leading a recent tour of downtown buildings and commercial blocks in New Rochelle where exterior and interior improvements are completed or under way and where illegally operating nightclubs were forced to close and are being replaced by retail stores and a soon-to-open restaurant. “And we have property owners investing on Main Street. This is a beehive of investment by small and mid-sized businesses. This is how economic development is done.”
Signs of progress
At 2 Division St., a contracting crew hired by the building”™s owners was busy converting two upper floors into artist work studios with assistance from the BID”™s Artist Spaces program, an effort to fill long-vacant upper floors in downtown buildings and at the same time develop a downtown arts community that attracts more shoppers and more business investment. The program has helped created more than 40 artist studios.
Around the corner at 537-539 Main St., the same owners are readying a vacant storefront for occupancy by the adjoining New Rochelle Furniture store, which will double its space in the expansion. The BID helped arrange lease negotiations between the tenant and the landlord.
DiBart also is working with the building owners to remove unsightly security gates, his ongoing effort at downtown businesses. The owners have signed on with the BID”™s facade improvements program, which provides matching New York State Main Street grants of up to $50,000 to landlords who complete improvements to their buildings.
The BID has assisted in changing the appearance and uncovering or restoring architectural features of more than 75 storefronts through the façade program, DiBart said. “We”™ve had pretty good luck in having this program ongoing for about seven years.”
That “good luck” was extended this month when the New Rochelle BID was awarded a $500,000 Main Street grant for the facade improvements program. The state to date has awarded the nonprofit BID a total of $900,000 in Main Street grants. The new funding is expected to assist private owners in improving more than 50 storefronts.
DiBart said those grants are used to try to leverage private investment in downtown properties “and to bring in new businesses with it. We have leveraged millions of dollars above the amount of the grant and have helped bring in new businesses with the grants.”
”˜Incredible entrepreneurs”™
The BID director steered his tour guests to Baby”™s Outlet, a 5,400-square-foot children”™s furniture store that opened in September at 514-518 Main St., a restored Art Deco building long occupied by the former Palace Shoe Store. The building later housed one of the city”™s more notorious nightclubs.
The historic building stood vacant when developer Joseph Simone of Simone Development Cos. bought it as part of a property assemblage marked for mixed-use redevelopment. With the recession and credit freeze, the developer abandoned those plans.
Working with Simone and a real estate broker, DiBart arranged to have New Rochelle business owners Chong Su and Swan Cho buy the Palace building and an adjacent vacant property. Immigrants to Queens from South Korea who first opened a fruit and grocery store in downtown Port Chester, the Chos had operated their La Casa de Bebe store in New Rochelle for eight years. The couple”™s business was about to be displaced by a CVS Pharmacy at another downtown location. The move to Main Street was a success for DiBart and the BID”™s business-retention initiative.
“Swan and Chong are incredible entrepreneurs,” said DiBart. “We want more people like them on Main Street.”
A new entrepreneur in New Rochelle, Rhonda Hamilton, plans a spring opening for her jewelry business, Just Funki Handcrafted Wearable Art, in newly built-out storefront space in the Avalon on the Sound residential tower on Division Street.
Operating from a home studio in Yonkers, she was first contacted by an Avalon leasing agent about bringing her business to New Rochelle. “They thought I would be a good fit because of the artistic nature” of her business in a downtown that is building a reputation and rebuilding vacant spaces as a center for working artists.
Hamilton contacted DiBart at the BID office. “They have been really phenomenal. Basically he held my hand through the process,” she said.
A $7,000 facade improvements grant from the BID paid for storefront awnings. DiBart introduced her to consultants at Monroe College”™s King Graduate School, who are working with her to design software for her business and draft a business plan. The college and the BID are helping her secure a business loan from Community Capital Resources, an alternative source of financing for small-business owners likely to be turned down by bank lenders.
DiBart and staff at Monroe College also are helping her develop a related business that Hamilton plans to open in New Rochelle.
“The great thing about Ralph DiBart is he”™s not sitting at his desk,” said Hamilton. “He”™s actually out there on foot talking to businesses.”
