Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff

The Downtown Boston Business Improvement District has announced a three-year effort to “forge [a] new identity” for the neighborhood.

The nonprofit is dedicating $2 million to the initiative it’s calling “Level Up Downtown.” The intent is to reduce retail vacancy rates over the long term and create a “vibrant and welcoming” environment that will draw in tourists, residents and office workers, alike, to “redefine downtown Boston as a creative entertainment and nightlife destination,” the Downtown BID said in its announcement.

“The new initiatives we have built over the last year are working, and there’s a new downtown emerging,” Downtown BID President Michael Nichols said in a statement, citing 30 consecutive months of growing foot traffic downtown, a 22 percent drop in the number of vacant storefronts in the last 12 months and a handful of notable new office and retail leases. “With ‘Level Up Downtown’ we are taking this neighborhood to the next level”

The BID’s $2 million will go to recruit nonprofits and small businesses to locate downtown, including a matchmaking service that pairs retail landlords with potential new tenants and offers the latter “wrap-around services” to help them design and market their new storefronts. The Downtown BID is already offering similar services to recipients of the city of Boston’s SPACE grants, announced by Mayor Michelle Wu this summer, which are intended to help diverse businesses from the city’s neighborhoods expand into downtown storefronts left empty by the fall-off in office worker foot traffic.

That grant program, now in its second round, is part of a strategy administration officials have described as “amenitizing downtown” so as to encourage workers at existing offices to come downtown more often and make the area more attractive to new residential development.

The BID will also organize pop-up business incubation spaces in empty storefronts and “destination public art” and events like multi-day festivals downtown, as well as boosting marketing efforts. The BID said it also plans to lobby local officials to develop policy and new zoning that “supports hospitality workers, tourists, students, and others in the enjoyment of” a 24-hour downtown.

The effort even has its own dedicated BID staffer, former Boston Foundation and Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative staffer Sean Webster.

“‘Level Up Downtown’ will build the Downtown Boston of the future,” Webster said in a statement. “The next few years offer a unique opportunity to position the neighborhood to be a more well-rounded, culturally relevant hub for our city. This can be a neighborhood where economic opportunity is achieved more equitably and where a new generation of businesses showcases the full vibrancy of Boston.”