Every day, Pedro Suarez looks out at the Roberto Clemente Plaza from his office window at Third Avenue and sees litter and open-air drug use. These were two of the biggest concerns in the community that Suarez said held the Business Improvement District (BID) back. The scene tethers him to the reality that there remains a long way to go before the heavily-trafficked area known as The Hub becomes what he hopes it could be.
When Suarez took the helm in February 2024, one of the first things he did was let people know the BID was still committed. He increased the organization’s online presence, launched a small business video series, and started a monthly newsletter.
In June, he organized zumba and salsa classes at the plaza with the new YMCA, hoping to reactivate the plaza which had become dormant for a year during the BID’s leadership gap.
“I thought it was going to be really cool. We could talk about it and people could see that there’s stuff happening in the plaza,” Suarez said.
The event was canceled. While the official announcement on the BID’s Instagram account blamed “low air quality, heat and other outdoor conditions,” Suarez told the Herald that people also did not feel safe because of public drug use in the plaza.
The Third Avenue BID, established in 1988, is the first and oldest commercial district in the Bronx. It is the primary facilitator for working with elected officials and government agencies on issues of public safety, sanitation, and social services. It also maintains green spaces within the district’s boundaries, which include Roberto Clemente Plaza.
The area houses about 300 storefront businesses, many of which contributed $450,927 in assessment revenue over the past year. Total revenue this year is projected at $630,000, according to Suarez. The amount funds the BID’s operations and services, on top of funds raised through grants or other revenues.
As its new executive director, Suarez implements economic development projects and liaises with stakeholders. And some business owners are taking notice.
“Since he got the role, he’s come over twice. It’s a good thing, ” said Dorar Nofal, owner of the Palace Gates Furniture at East 152nd Street, adding that just hours prior, a BID representative visited to inform them of an upcoming event.
“We’ve interacted three or four times,” said Danny Marrero, a manager at the People’s Choice Meat Market & Grill on East 149th Street. “You got to show up and talk to the store and the people.”
Although the two owners agreed that the BID is doing all it can to help small businesses in The Hub, they suspect that sanitation, drug use, theft, vendor enforcement, and a lack of parking spaces were problems affecting business, and solving them may be out of the organization’s hands.
Previous roles
Suarez got his start as an intern in then-Congressman Jose Serrano’s office in 2008, then as a field coordinator for Cy Vance’s first campaign for Manhattan District Attorney in 2009. He later sold advertising for community newspaper Manhattan Times, before joining NYC Business Solutions, a program funded by the city’s Department of Small Business Services, which supports BIDs.
“It was my first exposure to small business support,” Suarez said. “I could see myself doing something like this longterm in terms of economic development.”
Suarez then spent four years with the sanitation department, working on commercial waste zoning.
Between roles, Suarez worked at various nonprofits supporting local businesses, job hunters, and low-income communities until he applied for the executive director position at the BID. He said he found the opportunity to be “very daunting” because he has spent much of his life in The Hub.
Suarez and his family often frequented The Hub when he was a child. As an adult, his first apartment after college was at 148th Street and Brook Avenue, before he went on to complete a certification program at Hostos Community College, where his relatives from the Dominican Republic learned English.
“What attracted me to the role was knowing all of the challenges, knowing that it wasn’t easy, but being personally motivated as a lifelong Bronxite,” he said. The BID “has tremendous potential and a deep, rich history, and I want to see it continue to flourish despite the challenges,” he added.
High hopes for The Hub
After a morning shopping trip at the Hub with his son one summer weekend, Suarez realized the commercial district needed to do more to keep people in the area. “What I uncovered was that we have to create more spaces for families, in particular, to stay here longer,” he said.
A father to a preschooler and a toddler, Suarez recreates some of his own childhood memories along Third Avenue and experiences it from a parent’s perspective.
“The way I thought about Third Avenue as a kid was like those 25-cent machines where you get a little prize when you put in a quarter,” he said. “It was like you had an endless supply of quarters and you had all these options.”
“You came here knowing that ‘I’m only really here for this one thing, but I know that I’m going to make a day out of it because there’s all these other items and deals that I could potentially find,’” he added.
Suarez wants the area to be a center for commerce: “a major hub, if not the hub of the Bronx, in terms of foot traffic, dollars spent, public space activations, and diversity of not just storefront retail but also aboveground commercial space.”
But he knows there’s no simple fix.
“I try to give myself grace and say, ‘Here are the things that I can do. They’re not always going to work and I’m going to have some failures because I’m learning,” he said. “I forgive myself when I make mistakes and just try again tomorrow.”
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