Eastern City BID launches campaign to ‘shape future of the Square Mile’

Eastern City Business Improvement District (BID) this week launched its campaign for a second five year term representing the people and places of the Square Mile’s highest district.

The BID has pledged to build on its work improving public spaces, collaborating with cultural institutions and encouraging after-work activities in an area that has already transformed over the last decade. The proposal for the second term, which will be subject to a ballot on 27 January, also recognises the changing face of the City, which will require 1.2 million square metres of new office space by 2040.

Eastern City BID highlights

At a glitzy launch event at The Treehouse in 40 Leadenhall, the team presented their vision for the next five years as well as underscoring some of their success to date. Highlights included:

• 20.8 million impressions across its area promotions campaigns
• Over 180,000 people attending 400 plus events and cultural activations
• £465,433 invested in redesigning, improving and maintaining public green spaces
• Almost 3,000 plants and 86 public benches/seats installed
• 3,568 mobile phones securely marked across 22 sessions to deter theft
• 38,524 hours of additional street cleaning

They then welcomed Radio 6 Music DJ Craig Charles to perform a funk and soul set for business leaders from the BID zone.

There are more than 350 BIDs in the UK, with their activities funded by the businesses within their zones. Eastern City represents the area spanning from Liverpool Street to the north, Fenchurch Street Station to the East and King William Street to the West, making it the largest BID in the Square Mile.

Eastern City has already helped transform its section of the Square Mile through initiatives such as bringing cultural institutions into unused spaces. These include SET Ceramics near Fenchurch Street Station, winner of City AM’s Toast the City award for Best Art or Culture Experience.

The BID has also helped regenerate green spaces and created public seating in areas including refurbished public gardens at St Peter-upon-Cornhill churchyard, Fen Court and Fenchurch Street Station plaza. It also produced a public realm vision which sets out a strategic framework of recommended public space, greening and seating interventions.

‘Building a community’

Kate Hart, Eastern City BID chief executive, said: “With hybrid working here to stay, giving people a reason to come together matters more than ever, and we’ll keep building a community around them.

“That means more greenery, better public space, art, seating and animation, and turning unused spaces into experiences, so the Square Mile is a destination in its own right and not just a place of work.

“A strong turnout and a strong yes vote will give us the mandate, the resources and the credibility to shape this district’s future, rather than having it shaped around us.”

Nick Carty, Eastern City BID chairman, said: “A business district that only thinks about business isn’t one any of us want to work in. We began this term focused on Covid recovery: we end it playing our part in shaping a genuinely new way of working.

“I don’t regard renewal as something we’re entitled to. It is something we have to earn, vote by vote, business by business.”

• To find out more about the Eastern City BID and its plans for the future visit its website here