Photo courtesy of Boston Planning Department
Property owners in Boston’s Newmarket neighborhood renewed its business improvement district for another five-year term, in a vote of confidence in the organization’s efforts to address the encroaching drug and homelessness crisis.
Newmarket BID Executive Director Sue Sullivan said the neighborhood’s public safety has benefited from the organization’s private security patrols and city officials’ 2023 ban of tent encampments.
“There’s just a sense that open air drug use is not allowed, and it has really made a huge difference,” Sullivan said.
New England Security responds to 60 to 80 incidents daily in the neighborhood, according to the BID.
The unanimous vote extends the BID’s term for another five years starting in July 2027. The organization collects special assessments from property owners in the 1-square-mile district, comprising 620 properties and 218 separate owners.
Public safety concerns prompted property owners to explore the BID formation in 2020.
The organization has an annual budget of $4 million, which also includes public grants and contracts from the city of Boston. The Newmarket BID partners with the city on a “Homeless Back2Work” workforce development program.
Sullivan is now focusing on positioning the district for growth, leveraging its status as one of Boston’s last neighborhoods zoned primarily for industrial uses.
Building materials supplier F.W. Webb Company opened its newly-developed warehouse and showroom at 101 Hampden St. in 2024, and Allston-based City Realty Group received approval in 2025 for an estimated $210 million commercial-industrial development at 17 Bradston St. The 380,033 square-foot building would include office, lab and industrial space.
The BID is planning to install street banners, upgrade landscaping and plans to increase its marketing programs, Sullivan said.
“Having maintained our character and our industrial nature, we are at a point where there aren’t a lot of other areas in the city to develop,” she said. “So now people are looking at us. Before, how could you even market it? Somebody would come down here and look at the chaos.”
