Saddle Creek Merchants United leads this effort, in collaboration with Grammercy Park Collective.
The N. Saddle Creek Business Improvement District was created without meaningful input from the longstanding local family businesses and residents it claims to serve. From the beginning, the process excluded the people most affected by it.
What followed was a pattern that has repeated itself ever since: development decisions made without community consultation, streets closed despite business and resident opposition, ordinances pushed through city council while mayors were out of town, and BID funds spent with no transparent accounting of where the money goes, how contractors are selected, or why the organization meets two miles away at a storage unit facility rather than in the neighborhood it supposedly represents.
Residents who tried to raise concerns through an existing nearby association found that its leadership supported the development projects, even as residents did not. So neighbors formed Grammercy Park Collective. Not primarily as an advocacy group, but as a community that comes together around shared goals, including plenty of things that are just fun. This fight is one of those goals, because so many neighbors had no other place to turn.
Saddle Creek Merchants United represents the small businesses, many of them family-owned for generations, who are required by law to pay BID assessments into an organization that demonstrably does not serve them. Together, we are calling for an end to the N. Saddle Creek BID in its current form, and for a community process that actually includes the community.
We represent the independent businesses of Saddle Creek, many of them family-owned and deeply rooted in this neighborhood. We are required to fund the N. Saddle Creek BID through mandatory assessments and have received nothing in return except disruption, closed streets, and zero transparency about how our money is spent.
We are leading this effort because the businesses of Saddle Creek have been systematically excluded from decisions that directly affect their livelihoods. We are not against investment. We are against being forced to fund an organization controlled by outside interests while being shut out of every decision it makes.
Grammercy Park Collective is a community group, not solely an advocacy organization. We organize events, bring neighbors together, and do plenty of things that are simply fun. We are supporting this initiative because so many of our neighbors found themselves with no voice in decisions that directly affected their streets and their lives.
We have no formal hierarchy. We come together around shared goals and make decisions together. When this fight is done, we will still be here.
Neighborhood decisions should be made by the people who live and work here, not by outside investors and their political connections.
Any organization spending public or mandatory funds owes full accounting to the people it represents. The N. Saddle Creek BID has never provided this.
We are a collaborative coalition. We come together around shared goals and make decisions together.
We stand with every business and resident, including the businesses facing displacement for development they never asked for.
We oppose any effort to replat, sell, or permanently close public access roads for private gain. What belongs to the community stays with the community.
We believe every person in this neighborhood deserves access to food, employment, job training, and the institutions that reflect who they are. Development that removes that access is not progress.
We are for investment that solves real problems rather than creating new ones. Our neighborhood has real needs. Any development here should start by asking what those are.
Grammercy Park Collective exists because neighbors wanted to be together, not just to fight. This advocacy matters deeply, and so does the community it is trying to protect.
Merchant or resident, your voice matters. Show up, email, and stand with Saddle Creek.