A business improvement district (BID) for the Midway/Pacific Highway Corridor — the catalyst to promoting and coalescing local merchants and beautifying the heavily-traveled gateway to Ocean Beach and Point Loma — was reborn this week after a long dormancy.
The first Midway Business Improvement District (MBID) meeting was held Sept. 24 at Hampton Inn Sea World/San Diego Airport.
The initial BID meeting was the product of months of groundwork for establishing a new representative merchants’ group led by hotel general manager Victor Ravago and others.
“The goal this time around will be slightly different,” said Ravago. “This time it’s not to create a standard BID that relies on [tax] assessments. It’s not only to re-establish a coalition of businesses, but also (to include) some of the public entities we have in the area (like the county health department and U.S. Navy facilities) who have a vested interest in real estate in Midway.”
Ravago has been working with the San Diego BID Council, an umbrella group overseeing the operations of 18 separate BIDs citywide. About 25 percent of the city’s small-business operators are located within the boundaries of one of the city’s 18 BIDs.
Reactivating the Midway BID, which hasn’t operated for a decade or more, offers a chance to forge a fresh bond among area merchants, said Ravago.
“We’d like to establish community partnerships, not only to ensure safety and beautification but also to improve and revitalize the economic opportunities we have,” he said. “The other goal of ours is to establish a strong relationship with both the Point Loma and Ocean Beach communities, to really transform the Midway area into a gateway community.”
A BID is a defined area within which businesses pay an additional tax or levy to fund projects within the district’s boundaries for public improvement. 
Its website, www.Midwaybid.org, states the organization’s mission is to “unify the businesses within the Midway/North Bay Area to work toward the goal of economically revitalizing the Midway District. Our efforts will include marketing programs, civic beautification projects, commercial recruitment and parking and transportation improvements.”
The Midway-Pacific Highway Corridor is a hodgepodge of commercial, industrial, office and warehouse land uses — as well as a limited residential presence — in a transitional area  bordering Old Town, Point Loma, Pacific Beach and downtown San Diego.
Ravago said another objective in creating private-public partnerships will be to “leverage some existing resources, really try to think outside the box on what we can do to supplement the city’s ability to help us.”
The goal of the BID’s first meeting Sept. 24,said Ravago, was to “assess the state of the Midway area and to establish a consensus on some of the priorities.
“The [priority] list is long,” said Ravago. “But in establishing short-term priorities, hopefully that will develop a long-term plan on improving the Midway District.”