Philadelphia City Councilman Proposes Neighborhood Improvement Zone

By Mike Dunn

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Elected officials love their acronyms, and in Philadelphia City Council this week, we learned a new one: the “NIZ” — for Neighborhood Improvement Zone.

Philadelphia has Business Improvement Districts, or BIDs. It has Neighborhood Improvement Districts, or NIDs. This past week City Councilman Jim Kenney proposed NIZ.

“For streetscape improvements, lighting, advertising, cleaning. It’s almost like a BID or NID, but we’re not asking people to pay additional taxes. We’re going to utilize additional taxes that are there,” said Kenney.

Kenney says he got the idea from the city of Allentown, which was able to set up a NIZ in which state taxes generated in that zone were earmarked for a downtown hockey arena.