Curriculum
BDM 101: Business District Management – Foundations of the Profession

BDM 202: Retail/ Commercial Cooperative Management & Asset-Based Comprehensive Community Development

BDM 303: Strategic Capacity and Performance Budgeting

BDM 404: Survey Research and Evaluation for Managing Business Districts

 


BDM 101: Business District Management –
Foundations of the Profession

This online module presents an opportune setting for delving into the theoretical underpinnings of managed business districts (MBDs). BIDs originated in Toronto, Canada area during the 1970s, proliferated first throughout Canada, the United States, and then in other countries. These districts continue to evolve and are now known by many names such as: business improvement districts, special improvement districts, downtown improvement districts, community improvement districts, central improvement districts, Main Street programs and others. This introductory class investigates the operational evolution of managed business districts, focusing upon the central role of the professional business district manager.

Overview of the Course:

This class offers a comprehensive introduction not just to the theory and practice of managed business districts but it highlights the profession of district management as an unexplored public administration innovation. Managed business districts (MBD) refer collectively to the variously named publicly sanctioned entities with self-imposed obligatory or voluntary special assessments, self-determined public service provision and that occupy a legally designated area. The innovatory characteristics of MBDs, arise as state and local legislatively enabled self-governing entities that at times blur traditional distinctions between public and private organizations. The profession of business district management is examined as public-private partnership management.  Consequently, governance raises critical questions of democratic representation, accountability, transparency, and responsiveness. While the other learning modules investigate these touchstones of public administration in greater detail, this introductory course reviews the impact of these standards on managed business districts and thereby lays the foundation for the emerging profession of district management. Establishment of that profession compels a combined application of public entrepreneurship and public service together with the recognition, development, and channeling of social capital.

Whether legally formed as a municipal commission, quasi-governmental (quango), non-profit or other entity, the district management organization, under the leadership of its manager, oversees the day-to-day operation of the designated district, formulates its budget, and strategically plans for its future. The introductory class provides access to the groundwork that fortifies a district manager’s ability to engage stakeholders, spearhead strategic planning, collect and interpret citizen-centered data and employ performance management and evaluative systems as diagnostic tools all of which are more specifically treated in subsequent Modules of the certification program.

This introductory course examines:

  1. Both state and municipal enabling legislation from a variety of jurisdictions throughout the United States;
  2. Organizational design, culture, and identity of the management organization;
  3. The interdependence of public entrepreneurship, social capital development, and business development. It explores the complexities of:
  4. Public-private partnerships;
  5. Governing network leadership;
  6. The professional balance of citizen participation, business management, and public service. In practice, sub-local governance by managed business districts creates competing concerns requiring that district managers remain at the helm of the organization yet coalesce divergent stakeholder interests and multisector technologies to achieve district goals and objectives. This class presents a less traveled avenue of professional development that insightfully places the respective roles of the district manager, municipal officials, business owners, property owners, citizens, and relevant service providers in context to facilitate efficient community and economic development and to generate effective public service.

Course Objectives:

  1. Define a public-private partnership theory of professional business district management grounded in law, public administration, public entrepreneurship, social capital development, and community, and business development.
  2. Provide students with readings, on-line instruction, discussion and assignments that explore the perspectives, needs, and expectations of business district managers, municipal officials and other stakeholders.
  3. Increase knowledge about how contemporary governance leads to public policy implementation through networks or network constellations that emerge from social capital flowing through community and commercial collaborations.
  4. Guides students to re-think public administration standards of accountability, representation, transparency, and responsiveness, and to reflect upon these standards for MBD-specific application in an emerging era of public-private partnership management in public administration.
Upon completion students will be expected to:
  1. Understand the role and structure of MBDs in general and the unique position and impact of the professional district manager as public-private partnership manager.
  2. Understand the intention of a jurisdiction’s enabling legislation that supports the profession and to apply the MBD formation.
  3. Articulate the convergence of legal, economic, and administrative structure; and revitalization and community development strategies on district management governance in metropolitan and suburban areas.
  4. Develop local multi-sectoral strategic partnerships and collaborations and discern the factors at stake in coordinating an organization that emerges from collaborative agreements with, for example, the municipality, economic development corporations, community development corporations and groups, chambers of commerce, and business associations.
  5. Identify aims of public entrepreneurship and social capital and apply them to co-existing citizen-driven governance and commercial cooperation in the face of a competitive urban (or suburban) political economy.

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BDM 202: Retail Commercial Cooperative Management & Asset-Based Comprehensive Community Development

This on-line learning experience is an opportunity for students to identify and understand the difference and similarities between the key public and private capabilities involved in the implementation and governance of managed business districts.  In creating a “third door” to public management two key capabilities underscore the managed district public-private partnership: Retail/ Commercial Cooperative Management employed most notably by suburban malls, and Asset-Based Comprehensive Community Development, which goes beyond project-oriented activity to managing the assets and value of the district’s quality of life.  These capabilities fuse private and public sector skills and processes necessary to manage revitalization.  This Module will prepare practitioners of managed business districts to rise to the challenges and meet the demands looming ahead for public-private partnership development, and dispel the myth that malls and bog boxes are the demise of traditional downtowns.

 

Overview of the Course:

Although rarely explored, managed business districts (MBDs) incorporate a presence beyond the physical bounds of the legally prescribed district.  Building on Module One, this Module puts the fundamental aspects of Public Entrepreneurship and Social Capital into practice as the implementation domains of the public-private partnership that managed business districts represent.  Highly overlooked and often inappropriately maligned, as business development entities suburban malls are the precise equivalent to managed districts.  The difference is that the former is “a mall with walls”, and the later “a mall without walls” requiring managed business districts to be a partnership between the public and private sectors of the community.  Unlike suburban malls, managed districts do not have lease agreements that determine cooperative arrangements, therefore, a managed district relies on public authority, legitimacy, and processes to determine and sustain agreements, and maintain the financial commitments necessary to support agreements as the organization’s services and programs.  Managed districts exist within complex and comprehensive communities with varieties of mixed uses, opinions, and often contradictory needs.  The managers of MBDs must interact with a network of professional skilled contractors, public officials, and citizens who will have a professional influence on the outputs of the MBD.

This class explores how the MBD manager can work with the diverse interests of public and private sector actors and technologies by acquiring an intimate understanding of public and private sector organizational cooperation, business and community development, multi-focused entrepreneurship, destination marketing, and public-private partnership (non-profit) management.

Students contextually tackle questions of public-private sector merge applying theories of commercial cooperation and comprehensive community building and go into the field to examine how the theories work in real practice. .

Course Objectives:

  1. Identify customer service, community development, and marketing processes of public-private partnership management by familiarizing students with the technologies of Retail/ Commercial Cooperative management and Comprehensive Community Development.
  2. Develop an understanding of similarities and synergies between suburban malls and managed districts.
  3. Conceptualize how, as a public servant in the middle of a wheel of private free enterprise and quasi-public authority, a district manager is empowered to: 
    a) Upgrade services orientation and a community’s quality of life as a competitive edge while
    b) Merging private and public collaborative technologies, and
    c) Understand the purpose and  mechanisms of destination marketing.
  4. Demonstrate the domain capabilities of a public-private partnership as a integrated “third way” in public management.
  5. Lead students to re-think collective management technology, community assets, values, and quality of life standards of history, culture, location, potential, accountability and reinventing these standards for MBD-specific application in the governance and public service of public-private partnership management.

Upon completion students will be expected to:

  1. Understand the role, structure, and technology of suburban malls as it applies and contradicts managed business districts.
  2. Identify, analyze, and critique the service, conservation, and competitive responsibilities of public-private partnerships.
  3. Demonstrate knowledge of Retail/Commercial Cooperative Management and Comprehensive Community Development.
  4. Outline the purpose and mechanisms of customer service and destination marketing applications.
  5. Create a framework for managing business districts that is diverse, cooperative among and responsive to  the social and economic aspects of the district.

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BDM 303: Strategic Capability and Performance Budgeting

Against a backdrop of Modules One and Two, this on-line learning module presents an exploration of the linkage between Community/Downtown Revitalization Strategies and Public-Partnership Management and bridging those efforts with methods of financing to implement economic development strategies. This Module works to identify and understand the different stakeholders and their backgrounds in the governance of managed business districts.  Formal and informal networks become key to managed business district productivity, and a clear understanding of merging the priorities of different interest groups is essential to moving forward the district.

Overview of the Course:

From promise to performance: Strategic thinking and performance through strategic planning and performance budgeting create an organic contract between professionally managed business districts and the grate community they reside in.   Managed business districts are first created by, then focus upon and function through collective action.  The business district manager is often faced with the complexity of harnessing and channeling social and economic capital in the best interests of the MBD. He or she must exhibit entrepreneurship characteristics. These characteristics manifest in a myriad of ways for the business district professional: social, political, policy, public or even economic entrepreneurship. This module is concerned with the revitalization strategies that MBD’s use to obtain social and economic development results.  There are a myriad of strategic approaches from the Main Street Program’s Four Points Method, and other variations to Strategic Design Principles that envision and direct a MBD organization to fulfilling on future goals that build the community.  Citizen participation in MBD creation and operation is at the crux of building cohesive stable communities. This class also investigates role responsibilities of citizen stakeholders, and how district managers can facilitate citizen participation in stakeholder accountability, transparency, and responsiveness.

Revitalization strategies are particularly relevant when it comes time for MBDs to reassess goals, and the means of financing those goals. Decisions to undertake certain strategic goals may require more financing than normal budgeting through property assessments can support. In those situations, the MBD must consider financing options that can help realize extensive strategic goals. Moreover, there is a need for a citizen-driven approach to planning the range of services that business management districts offer stakeholders. This class examines strategic planning and decision-making methods and the involvement of citizens as a form of social capital mobilized to facilitate action, and the budget as a pragmatic performance contract. It also demonstrates the interconnectedness of strategic planning, decision-making, responsible risk-taking and financing.

Students contextually tackle questions of stakeholder roles, responsibilities, and expectations by  examining and developing strategic revitalizations plans for their business district.

Course Objectives:

  1. Learn and demonstrate the factors useful in identifying strategies that target specific goals of the MBD such as planning, clean & safe programs, design/streetscaping, economic and market development, and business recruitment.
  2. Demonstrate the mechanics of interorganizational networks that develop among and between individual and group stakeholders fundamentally built upon trust and negotiated terms collectively determined by the participants.
  3. Re-think public administration standards of accountability, representation, transparency, and responsiveness reinventing these standards for MBD-specific application in an emerging era of network governance and public service.
  4. Understand responsible risk-taking and methods for recognizing, analyzing, and developing alternative decisions.
  5. Develop a set of tools for gaining community and board support for such goals as service provision, event planning, public  relations, market research and development, and other goals.
  6. Learn and demonstrate awareness of the link between environmental complexities and economic/ community development.
  7. Apply action steps for developing a performance budget and implementing a strategic plan for the development of your  managed business district and the financing of that plan.
Upon completion students will be expected to:
  1. Understand how to match a district’s revitalization objectives and capabilities with the anticipated demands of the environment so as to produce a plan of action.
  2. Appreciate the contractual importance of involving in the strategic planning and decision-making process individuals affected by changes that will result from those plans and decisions.
  3. Identify and apply performance budgeting to the various conceptual frameworks used actually or potentially by stakeholders as planning tools in assessing the future actions of the managed district.
  4. Outline pertinent provisions of collaborative agreements to engage stakeholders that include elements of accountability, transparency, and conflict resolution.
  5. Identify financing options to enable implementation of strategic plan proposals.

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BDM 404: Survey Research and Evaluation for Managing Business Districts

This on-line learning module presents an opportunity for students to learn how to identify, develop, and apply methods of collecting data, particularly for surveys; as well as interpreting and presenting that data to stakeholders of the managed business district. 

Overview of the Course:

Evaluating the community contract – performance and progress: Surveys and focus groups are data collection tools that are used to collect information and provide feedback and evaluation about organizations and public-private partnerships. Surveys are especially becoming important and common place in many jurisdictions as they attempt to gauge stakeholder expectations. Focus groups allow verbal collective feedback often engaging divergent viewpoints instrumental in data analysis and presentation. This course explores performance management and measures, evaluation techniques and strategies, survey construction, identifies important aspects of focus groups, and adds to the transformation process of making use of information collected. That is, students see how to convert raw numbers and statistics into graphics that are informative, to the point and that keep the audience engaged.

Course Objectives:

  1. Increase knowledge about performance management, evaluation strategies, and surveys of:
    a) Business and property owners in the MBD
    b) Residents in the MBD
    c) Consumers and visitors of the MBD
  2. Learn how to design an effective instrument and how to develop a good research plan.
  3. Learn how to reach citizens and to increase response rates.
  4. Understand how a focus group operates as well as the nature of information that it can deliver.
  5. Review public and private sector processes and current practices of collecting and reporting data by a variety of methods.
  6. Be familiar with how to make sense of data collected and how to communicate it to district management, business and property owners, and municipal authorities and to the general citizenry.
Upon completetion students will be expected to:
  1. Understand the importance of stakeholder surveys in measuring and evaluating performance.
  2. Comprehend the systemic factors that influence the effectiveness and utility of stakeholder surveys as well as other methods of data collection.
  3. Understand the complexities of focus groups and use of focus groups.
  4. Appreciate the visual potential of data presentation as an audience-specific technique in the professionalism of business district management.
  5. Discover international trends of MBDs and the customizing of sub-local managing and governing accomplishments.
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