The Downtown Alliance, which was founded by 1995, turns 30 this year and is celebrating the milestone with the video above (and you can read more in this post).

The business improvement district taxes property owners (their assessment is more than $20 million at this point) to provide extra services for businesses and residents below Murray. They have their own public safety staff, sanitation program, bus service and cultural events. They also provide grants to small businesses and provide better way finding and lighting around the district. The BID has also designed streetscapes, adding public plazas to some of Fidi’s streets (with free Wi-Fi), and has worked to find compassionate resources for the homeless living in their district.

I will note that they also support local media, and for that we all say thanks!

The BID’s founding president was ultimate city booster Carl Weisbrod, whose resume is too big to list here, but includes president in the ’70s of the 42nd Street Development Project; founding president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation; and president of the real estate division for Trinity Church. The organization’s founding chair was Robert R. Douglass, the longtime advisor to Governor Nelson Rockefeller, David Rockefeller and Chase Bank. Today, the Alliance is chaired by Ric Clark, who was with Brookfield for years before founding WatermanClark and Burnside Investments, and led by Jessica Lappin, who was named its president in 2014 after serving in the City Council.

The residential population has gone from 14,000 in 1995 to 70,000 now, a future that was not envisioned when The Times first reported on the Alliance’s founding three decades ago. “Whether visionary or delusional, the possibility is also being explored of converting some distinguished but obsolete office towers into apartment buildings,” David Dunlap wrote, “cliff dwellings and aeries that would appeal to the same pioneering spirit that colonized SoHo and TriBeCa.”

Here’s to that pioneering spirit.