Block By Block helps downtowns eliminate crime and grime
August 18, 2003
Lucy May
Courier Staff Reporter

Chemed Center property manager Dan Eifert was just wrapping up an elegant lunch at the Maisonette to thank Dinsmore & Shohl for renewing its lease when the rain started. Before Eifert's guests even stepped outside, a team of downtown ambassadors was at the restaurant, umbrellas in hand, ready to escort the attorneys to a skywalk that would keep them dry all the way back to their offices. "I don't know how anyone could not be impressed," Eifert said. Contracted by the downtown advocacy group Downtown Cincinnati Inc., the downtown ambassadors are those smiling people in bright yellow shirts who walk through downtown sweeping up litter, power-washing sidewalks and giving directions to tourists in need. "This kind of cooperation is the very thing we need to re-establish downtown as a viable place to live and work," said Clifford Roe, Dinsmore's managing partner. While the downtown ambassador program has been around since 2001, it's been getting wider recognition recently for helping make downtown a more welcoming and hospitable place.

"We're committed to downtowns, and, more importantly, we're committed to Cincinnati," said Block By Block General Manager Steve Hillard. "We think Cincinnati is going to be the model for this program."

Late last year, Hillard persuaded Louisville-based Brantley Services to spin off Block By Block into a separate subsidiary with headquarters in Cincinnati. Brantley started operations in Cincinnati in 2000 with contracts through its Brantley Security, which provides security locally for such clients as UPS, Atrium II and the Fourth and Walnut Center. Since spinning off Block By Block, the company has purchased a building at 910 Plum St. downtown, moving its operations from Tri-County.

With a major marketing push at an International Downtown Association conference in Cleveland this fall, Hillard aims to grow his 125-employee company by three new cities a year for the next five years.

Nationwide, the market for such services is growing, said Dave Feehan, president of the International Downtown Association in Washington, D.C. Roughly 800 cities in the United States have formed business development districts, the entities that typically employ companies like Block By Block.

"I would characterize it as more than a trend," Feehan said. "It's a full-blown phenomenon."

Those districts, like the special improvement district downtown managed by DCI, use fees paid by property owners to fund special services. Most tend to concentrate initially on additional litter pickup and added security, known as "clean and safe" or "crime and grime," Feehan said.

"These districts know that 30 million visitors a year go to Disney World and another 20 million go to Disneyland, so they're used to a standard of clean and safe for entertainment," he said. "That's what people primarily use downtowns for these days -- entertainment. And cities can't do it anymore. Cities don't have the budgets."

In Columbia, S.C., the work by Block By Block employees over the past year has been credited with helping to reduce crime downtown by 25 percent overall, said Matt Kennell, executive director of the city's City Center Partnership. And some quality-of-life crimes have been reduced even more. Citations for public drinking, for example, were reduced by 90 percent, he said, and car break-ins were reduced by 50 percent.

Locally, the downtown ambassadors, easily identifiable by their shirts, routinely report suspicious activity to the police.

Hillard, a former police officer in California, said his company works hard to develop a good relationship with police and trains its employees to be good observers and witnesses without trying to be cops.

Already, the company's work in Cincinnati has grown. In addition to its contract with DCI to employ downtown ambassadors for the central business district, the company has agreements with the city of Cincinnati to employ litter patrols in Over-the-Rhine and soon will have a team of employees dedicated to Findlay Market.

In all, those three Cincinnati contracts are worth more than $1.4 million each year for Block By Block, which has total annual revenue of $4.3 million, Hillard said.

Assistant City Manager Rashad Young said the city chose Block By Block because of the company's success with DCI in the central business district.

"We want people to know we're open for business," he said. "The key is we want friendly folks who are downtown and can help people with directions and the like."

Hillard likes to say his company hires its employees for their personalities and trains them on the skills they need. That customer service-oriented attitude is what attracted DCI to the company, said DCI President David Ginsburg.

"We really believe what's going to make the difference in downtown is not only making it safer and cleaner but also making it friendlier and more informative," Ginsburg said. "I don't think a day goes by that I don't get a call or e-mail from someone who met one of our ambassadors in a yellow shirt."

And, Roe said, while the ambassadors aren't the panacea for healing downtown's ills, they're certainly a good start.

"It's an indicator that everyone's trying to do the right thing," he said.