Property owners in Boston’s Newmarket neighborhood are proposing a business improvement district to provide new security and sanitation services and private transit shuttles to the area, which has become an epicenter of the region’s opioid abuse crisis.

The Newmarket Business Association estimates the program would cost $3.5 million annually. Approximately 85 percent of the parcel owners within the district have signed on to the idea, which would be funded by a fee added to property tax bills.

“The hardest question we get all the time is: isn’t this something that should be paid by the city? And the answer really is the city puts a lot of resources down here,” said Susan Sullivan, executive director of the Newmarket Business Association. “But sometimes areas need more, and if you want to make a difference and see improvement then sometimes you do need to supplement it.”

A petition to form the BID will be submitted to the Boston city council in a few weeks, Sullivan said.

The closure of the Long Island homeless shelter in 2014 and the presence of methadone clinics and homeless shelters has attracted a large encampment in the northern section of the district near Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard. In October, Mayor Marty Walsh announced a new set of programs to reduce public drug use and overdoses.

“Newmarket is adjacent to Mass & Cass so there are additional needs for cleaning and sanitation and addressing a lot of the underlying impacts,” At-Large City Councilor and mayoral candidate Michelle Wu said. “They’re at a breaking point in terms of their ability to welcome customers and employees to their businesses.”

More than 8,300 people work in the neighborhood, which contains a transforming mix of industrial, health care and commercial properties. The BID would include escorts to vehicles upon request and enhanced private security, Sullivan said.

The shuttle service would run in 15-minute intervals to businesses from nearby transit stations including the Newmarket commuter rail stop and up to four stations on the Orange and Red lines including Broadway, Andrew, Back Bay and Ruggles, Sullivan said.

“The bus service is not adequate as far as frequency and reliability,” Sullivan said. “We’ve asked the MBTA a number of times to increase the number of buses.”

An estimated 10 BID employees would provide maintenance and services support and up to six additional outreach workers would be hired to focus on public health outreach.

State law allows the formation of business improvement districts in contiguous geographic areas where at least 75 percent of the land is zoned for commercial, industrial or mixed use. Approval is contingent on support from owners of at least 60 percent of the properties, including those representing a minimum 51 percent of the assessed valuation within the district.

Large employers including Boston Medical Center and developer Edens, owner of the South Bay Center, support the measure, Sullivan said.

Michael Feldman, president of a surveying business and owner of its headquarters office building at 152 Hampden St., said he’s seen the benefits of a BID in Worcester. Feldman Surveyors has a small branch office in the Downtown Worcester Improvement District, which was formed in 2018.

“I go to my Worcester office and I see people sweeping the street and keeping it clean, and Newmarket could really use this whether it’s security or a shuttle to take employees to the stations,” Feldman said. “It’s just going to add value to the neighborhood and our properties.”

The additional fee on the 21,000-square-foot Hampden Street building would be about $13,000 a year, he said.

Property owners in the Downtown Crossing neighborhood formed Boston’s first BID in 2011 and hired a team of “ambassadors” who provide information to visitors along with maintenance and cleanup services. In 2017, landlords of properties bordering the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway agreed to form a BID that provides operations, maintenance and improvements to the 17-acre chain of downtown park parcels.