Long Island City Partnership
Project Overview
The Long Island City Partnership serves one of New York City's fastest-growing and most dynamic neighborhoods. Located on the western edge of Queens directly across from Midtown Manhattan, Long Island City has undergone a remarkable transformation from an industrial center to a vibrant mixed-use district. The BID supports a diverse array of businesses, cultural institutions, and an expanding residential population. With its distinctive waterfront, world-class arts organizations like MoMA PS1, and rapidly changing skyline, Long Island City represents one of the most dramatic urban transformations in recent New York City history.
Insight Analysis
Long Island City (LIC) is a vibrant, rapidly developing neighborhood in Queens that functions as a major transportation hub with excellent connectivity through 8 subway lines, 15 bus lines, 3 ferry landings, and numerous other transit options. Originally established in 2005, the Long Island City Business Improvement District (LIC BID) has undergone strategic expansions in 2017 and now in 2025, tripling its coverage area to serve the growing needs of this dynamic community.
The 2025 expansion and also our BID transformation aim to address a critical problem identified in the expansion areas: lack of visibility and community engagement. This expansion aims to bring much-needed services to previously underserved areas that have seen increasing foot traffic and commercial activity, with former side streets now functioning as main streets requiring dedicated support and infrastructure.
The neighborhood features diverse assets including educational institutions, cultural venues, office spaces, creative workshops, food production facilities, and community recreation areas. Key stakeholders in this expansion include business owners in the expansion area, nearby residents, visitors (primarily from within the city), LIC Partnership operation officials, municipal departments, and potential investors.
Data analysis of the area reveals significant foot traffic patterns along major corridors, with pedestrian density simulations highlighting key intersection points that would benefit from activation. The expansion builds upon LIC's established identity as a cultural hotspot with numerous galleries, museums, and performance spaces that have transformed the neighborhood from its industrial roots into a vibrant arts destination.
Insight Visualization 1
Transformation Analysis
The transformation strategy for the LIC BID expansion area builds on successful models already proven in the other part of LIC, particularly drawing inspiration from Culture Lab LIC. This cultural hub transformed a once-industrial block into a vibrant community center, demonstrating how temporary venues can establish lasting identity and activity. Culture Lab LIC serves as a scalable model for cultural infrastructure, attracting over 1,000 attendees per weekend, generating $785K+ in annual revenue, supporting 20+ artist residencies yearly, and maintaining 30+ community partnerships.
Drawing from the successful experience in LIC, our proposed intervention format centers around pop-up events—temporary, multi-functional public spaces (street corners and parking lots) strategically located in underutilized areas. These pop-ups offer several advantages: they are pilot-friendly and easy to iterate, temporary by design, low-risk yet high-impact, and serve as bridges to future planning by opening pathways for long-term interventions without requiring permanent infrastructure.
An innovative "LIC BID Pop-up Event Location Selection Tool" has been developed using path-based multi-criteria decision analysis to identify optimal parking lot locations for these events. The tool evaluates 54 potential parking lots based on subway accessibility, housing proximity, biking infrastructure, POI proximity, and traffic flow, creating a comprehensive scoring system that optimizes for community impact.
The transformation combines "hard" and "soft" system elements. The hard system includes building physical pop-up cultural and market plazas featuring local art installations, food truck areas, live performances, and interactive wayfinding. The soft system provides digital and institutional support through website promotion, social media engagement, and the integration of an existing LIC Community E-Gift Card program that connects over 100 participating businesses.
Transformation Visualization 1
Prediction Analysis
To understand the potential impacts of our pop-up interventions, we analyzed two key scenarios: a mini market featuring local food and crafts, and an art installation designed to encourage walkability and increase dwell time in the area. Our analysis shows that each intervention creates different but complementary impacts. The mini market generates peak activity during lunch hours, with visitors staying 8-12 minutes on average and spending approximately $15-25 per visit. Meanwhile, art installations attract after-work crowds and weekend family visits, with shorter dwell times but contribute to area awareness through social media engagement.
These immediate effects cascade into broader impacts. Immediately after visiting, awareness of the area begins to grow through multiple channels – from new social media followers and newsletter signups to geo-tagged posts and community survey responses. This digital engagement has already generated 40% year-over-year growth on Instagram for similar initiatives. The pop-up economy creates several economic benefits: boosting nearby retail revenue, providing direct income for vendors, creating spillover sales for permanent businesses, potential job creation in both temporary and permanent roles, and opportunities to link with grant programs for long-term support. Market research indicates that while the monthly rent for retail space averages $24.92 per square foot in the area, these temporary activations can operate for just 3-14 days while creating outsized impact.
By activating these spaces, the pop-up events will increase foot traffic, participation and engagement, boost local business revenue, create economic impact through job creation and tax revenue, enhance perceived safety, and strengthen neighborhood identity. This data-driven approach ensures targeted interventions that maximize return on investment while building community support for the expansion initiative.
Prediction Visualization 1
Consensus Analysis
Our consensus-building approach creates a collaborative framework where stakeholders with diverse interests work together toward shared goals through transparent processes, inclusive participation, and iterative refinement that adapts to changing conditions and feedback. This process recognizes that different stakeholders have varying interests, influence, and preferred communication methods, requiring tailored engagement strategies. For groups like local business owners and residents, we employ accessible methods including community workshops, social media engagement, and direct participation in pop-up events.
Our multi-channel strategy utilizes both active input methods (interviews, workshops, comments, feedback forms) and passive data collection (foot traffic analysis, social media engagement, participation metrics, economic data, platform analytics) to create a comprehensive understanding of what stakeholders both say they want and how they actually behave when interventions are implemented. For example, we can observe which pop-up events generate the most engagement, analyze spending patterns through the LIC gift card program, and track how interventions affect visitor dwell time, creating a more complete picture of stakeholder preferences and identifying opportunities that might be missed through traditional engagement alone.
Our consensus process preserves existing cultural assets by implementing a local-first policy that prioritizes existing businesses in pop-up opportunities, giving them the first chance to benefit from increased visibility. This ensures we protect what makes LIC unique while enhancing its connectivity and appeal.
We've established a clear evolution path that transforms temporary interventions into permanent improvements over time:
- Phase 1 (1-3 months): Pop-up phase with temporary installations requiring minimal infrastructure
- Phase 2 (3-12 months): Seasonal programming with recurring events and light infrastructure
- Phase 3 (1-2 years): Semi-permanent installations with more substantial physical improvements
- Phase 4 (2+ years): Permanent transformation with full implementation of successful elements
At each stage, we evaluate success through multiple metrics: economic indicators like business revenue and occupancy rates; social measures including event participation and resident satisfaction; visibility metrics such as social media mentions and visitor numbers; and sustainability factors including operational costs and environmental impact. This phased approach builds consensus through shared experience rather than abstract plans, reducing risk while allowing the community to shape the area's future organically.
To make this consensus process practical and accessible, we've developed an interactive Streamlit tool that serves as both a communication platform and a decision-making framework. The platform allows stakeholders to explore potential interventions and their impacts, and captures distributed input from participants regardless of when or where they engage. By integrating data from our previous analysis phases, it helps stakeholders understand the potential consequences of different choices while fostering a sense of ownership and investment in the expansion's success.
Consensus Visualization 1
Data & Methodology
Data Sources
NYC Open Data, Long Island City Partnership Annual Reports, Census Data, Real Estate Market Data, Arts Organization Data, MTA Ridership