Crystal City BID Celebrates Its Best Year Yet
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 30, 2011
CONTACT: Angela Fox, afox@crystalcity.org, 703-412-9430.
Crystal City BID Celebrates Its Best Year Yet
Crystal City, VA – The Crystal City Business Improvement District (BID) celebrated its biggest, and best, year in existence on June 20th at the organization’s annual meeting. Held on the roof of the Crystal Square Apartments, the meeting highlighted the organization’s achievements over the past year further positioning Crystal City as an ACTIVE, ARTFUL, ACCESSIBLE, and GREEN place.
“It has been an amazing year in Crystal City,” said Angela Fox, President/CEO of the Crystal City BID. “We enhanced our programs, created new events, showcased the many fabulous assets of Crystal City, and we are even more excited and energized about the coming year.”
Under the ACTIVE banner, the Crystal City BID continued its 5K Friday series with more runners than ever. The Crystal City Twilighter has grown into the premier evening race for the DC area. The Crystal City BID expanded Bike to Work Day into Bike to Work Week, encouraging people to adopt bicycle commuting as part of their lifestyle, and brought street hockey to the area, and still grew the Air Force Cycling Classic, and a kid-tacular festival for the Marine Corps Marathon.
In addition to a wildly successful Vintage Crystal Wine Festival, the Crystal City BID debuted a new location for Crystal Couture, hosted the first 1K Wine Walk in the interior concourse, and created a weekly Wine in the Water Park. The organization also put up more ArtWalls, painted a Road Tattoo, installed an illuminated sculpture series, hung FotoWeek in the interior concourse, hosted FLASH (an explosion of photography), and created Columns of Color on the streets, continuing the area’s transformation into an ARTFUL place.
To enhance Crystal City’s already strong transit assets, the Crystal City BID welcomed and helped shape the Capital Bikeshare rollout. They also expanded their free outdoor Wi-Fi program while enhancing the network. On top of that, the organization continues to its work to enhance the gateways into Crystal City, ensuring that Crystal City is ever-easily ACCESSIBLE.
Everyone wants to live and work in a GREEN place. To those ends, the Crystal City BID has continued its low-to-no waste policy at events and brought community composting to the area. The Power Purge and Shred continues to be popular, and securely keeps tons of electronics and paper out of landfills. FRESHFARMS was so impressed by the strength of the Crystal City Farmers Market that they decided to extend the dates of the market by two months (starting a month early and closing a month later).
The Crystal City BID conducts surveys at all of their events. These surveys show people coming from all over greater Washington to experience all the compelling things that Crystal City has to offer. They consistently rate their experience both at events and in Crystal City in general at the highest level. With tens of thousands of people attending events in Crystal City over the past year, the organization is achieving its goal of changing the way the people see, and perceive, Crystal City.
As a further testament to the success of the Crystal City BID, the Arlington County Board recently removed the company’s sunset clause, extending the life of the organization indefinitely. This vote of confidence is a reaction to the tangible benefits that the Crystal City BID is bringing to the area, and after having their best year yet, the Crystal City BID is already looking to surpass their achievements in the next.
