A roar mixed with a hum dominates the corner of Jerome Avenue and East Gun Hill Road. On Jerome Avenue between Mosholu Parkway and East Gun Hill Road, a calcalvade of regular customers frequent the parade of restaurants, clothiers, and banks that make up the strip.

On East Gun Hill Road between Jerome and Webster avenues, the tone is more low-key during the day, with residents grabbing a slice of pizza on the go, flowers for an anniversary, or a prescription at their neighborhood drugstore.

It may surprise some storeowners in that vicinity to know they’re operating within the Jerome-Gun Hill Business Improvement District, a commercial corridor where convenience shopping rules. And Jennifer Tausig, the BID’s newest executive director, is on a mission to let merchants know there’s been a service set up since 1997 that intends to boost their business.

At the Keeper’s House, a stone house at a quiet section of Norwood, Tausig visualizes the next big project for JGHBID. Economic development is her mantra, and when revving that engine she’s not thinking how it looks tomorrow, but what it could look like beyond.

“While it’s definitely a journey, the destination feels big,” Tausig said.

New Hire
Tausig was hired this year after spending several years at Phipps Neighborhood, a social services and affordable housing provider based in the South Bronx. She developed an Out-of-School-Out-of-Work program called “Career Network: Healthcare” focusing on healthcare careers for young people that attracted Montefiore Health System, which partnered with the 111-year group to implement the program at several of its hospital sites.

Tausig’s program was instituted successfully, drawing attention from the hospital’s executive vice president and chief strategy officer, Lynn Richmond, who also serves as a board member of Mosholu Preservation Corporation (MPC), the community development nonprofit that publishes the Norwood News. With a vacancy needed to fill the role of MPC director, Tausig was asked to fill it. With MPC serving as a day-to-day manager of the BID, Tausig easily slipped into the role of BID executive director. She was also tacked with another title as economic development director for the hospital, where she intends to focus on economic development in Westchester County.

Tausig’s business experience is somewhat unorthodox. She learned to take risks from her mother while taking a more grounded approach from her father, a small business owner who built a successful tech company. Tausig sees herself as an amalgam of the two.

Economic development is a means to an end, where a strong business community can strengthen neighborhoods entirely, according to Tausig. “Being able to improve the quality of life for people so that they can have places to shop, and they can afford things and live in nice places makes it easier to go to work and raise your kids and have a better quality of life,” she said.

Business at the BID
For those unaware of what a BID does, a crash course: a BID serves as a public-private agency for small businesses. Its funding comes from a special tax assessment property owners agree to pay in exchange for private sanitation services, marketing promotions or special events geared to steer more business to the commercial corridor. Businesses on Jerome Avenue between East Mosholu Parkway and East Gun Hill Road, and on East Gun Hill Road between Jerome and Webster avenues, are part of the Jerome-Gun Hill BID.

It’s now Tausig’s responsibility to meet those tenets. She’s done so since being hired in July, continuing a fact finding tour that’s found her inheriting some major problems that need attention. Some grievances merchants have listed include the small number of surveillance cameras, number of store vacancies, and elevating the quality of establishments found at the BID. From what Tausig has heard, “there’s certainly a need for a more diverse and high level of retailer.”

“[F]rom what I’ve heard from community members is that there is the ability and the want for them to buy some nicer clothes in the $40 to $50 level, whereas right now they’re mostly $10 to $20,” Tausig said. “Thinking about how to find an anchor could meet the needs of the retailer.”

Scouting for retailers arguably stands as one of the bigger goals. Potential customers already surround JGHBID. Above, the rumble of the elevated 4 train carries hundreds of thousands of straphangers to the Mosholu Parkway stop, leading to the BID’s gateway (MTA figures show 2,891,451 commuters got off or on the station in 2015).  Below, some 10,000 employees of Montefiore Health System’s Moses Campus, where median incomes hover around $55,000, walk near or along the BID. There’s also the roughly 3,000 residents who live in nearby Tracey Towers, one of the tallest Mitchell-Lama complexes that’s home to middle class earners.

The potential for an increased customer base exists as indicated by a retail analysis report by Larisa Ortiz & Associates, a business development think tank. The report found that $142 million in profits are missed in products and services absent at JGHBID. The data is seen as a framework “for retail market attraction,” and one that hopefully lands in the hands of retail brokers. It’s one reason why Tausig is planning a so-called brokers breakfast.

“We can use that with the brokers and say, ‘Look, here’s data that says people in this neighborhood are spending millions of dollars outside the neighborhood for shoes,” Tausig said. “So go find us some shoe retailers.”

Along with garnering interest from the outside, Tausig has begun gauging merchants from the inside by enticing many to take an active role at BID board meetings, where concerns are aired and future plans brainstormed. The 15-member board, where BID executive directors serve at the board’s pleasure, is comprised of property owners, merchants, elected officials and one community member.

Boosting the BID’s visibility remains her priority. It’s helped by signature events such as its annual Fall Festival, which draws several thousand people to the all-day event. Holiday lights and sidewalk sales also contribute to the BID’s visibility, along with commercials that run on local cable stations.

Above all, Tausig looks to flesh out the BID’s identity. Identity is critical, Tausig notes, and one that she hopes can keep its current shopping base within JGHBID. To find that identity, Tausig poses the question: “[W]hat can we do to keep the people who are in the community and are spending their money and shopping elsewhere to do their shopping here?’”

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.