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NO M A BUSINESS IM P R O V EMENT D ISTRI C T STR A T E GI C PL A N 2022–202 6 Making NoMa Magnetic
One of the most exciting things about NoMa is that it’s continuously evolving.

It’s a wonderful place today, yet still becoming what it will ultimately be.

This strategic plan sets our ambitions for the future of NoMa and outlines the ways in which we will work to realize it.
The plan is where the BID’s purpose meets its vision, and establishes a common goal for the BID and its partners to work towards.
This plan will define and guide our work over the next five years, allowing us to create, curate, and activate NoMa’s working, playing, and living spaces for the benefit of all.
Join us as we envision the NoMa of 2026.
Our Goal

Making NoMa Magnetic

Magnetic places have a gravitational pull, they draw us in and encourage us to stay awhile, to dig deeper, to get comfortable. These places feel vital to us, and that vitality is visceral—we feel it when we walk around a place, we hear it in the rhythms of work and life. 

This goal rose to the top over the course of our planning process for a clear reason: the success of the NoMa neighborhood and NoMa businesses hinges on it. Our mix of office, retail, and residential provides a resilient foundation for NoMa’s drawing power; but our success depends on the people who live, work, and play here, and it’s the BID’s role to focus and amplify that power.

To us, a Magnetic NoMa is:

Uplifting

Dynamic

Vibrant

And above all else, a Magnetic NoMa is an undeniable part of what makes life in DC great.

It’s worth noting too that this goal is not new for the BID. Indeed, it has been present in everything the BID has done since its inception. Reiterating the goal of a Magnetic NoMa here at the apex of our strategic design for the next five years ensures that it will remain top-of-mind for our staff and board and rightly centers it as we build our work on the foundation provided by this plan and the BID’s history.

Our strategic pillars:
  • Connectivity
  • Economic Development
  • Inclusivity
  • Brand & Reputation
  • Play
  • Safety

These strategic pillars are the fundamentals of the strategy, clearly identifying the work areas of the BID and supporting the goal. They are organizational priorities that work in concert with each other rather than in conflict, and they underlie all of the BID’s internal departments and programs. Each is important on its own, but it is in their interaction with and influence upon each other that their true value lies. It’s no exaggeration to say that without work on all six pillars, work on any one of them would be much more difficult. Each of our initiatives is in service to multiple of Pillars.

The goal of Making NoMa Magnetic led us directly to a set of key initiatives.

The initiatives are important, ambitious, cross-cutting projects that will require work from everyone at the BID—and the BID’s partners—in order to achieve success.

A Magnetic NoMa is…
  • Dynamic
  • Uplifting
  • Vibrant

or Filter by Strategic Pillars

  • Brand & Reputation
  • Brand & Reputation means growing NoMa’s sterling reputation for businesses and their employees, and for residents old and new. NoMa is not just a physical place or a place on a map, bounded by roads and railways, but also a conceptual place in peoples’ minds and in their homes. We’re building a name for the neighborhood that is synonymous with fun, with play, with arts, and with culture, and promising that NoMa will be a destination for everyone.Show More
  • Connectivity
  • Connectivity means understanding NoMa’s streets, sidewalks, trails, and rails as spaces that must serve people first. It means connecting communities and people, enhancing pedestrian conditions and experiences, improving transportation and mobility resources and access, creating innovative ground-level activations and experiential art, actively supporting transit, and reimagining key roads as safe spaces that connect communities instead of dividing them.Show More
  • Economic Development
  • Economic Development goes hand-in-hand with physical development, but is not a foregone conclusion. It must be planned for, shepherded, and safeguarded through policies, programs, priorities, and placemaking. As a strategic pillar, economic development means ensuring that NoMa remains a resilient engine of growth at the heart of DC and lives up to the ideal of mixed-use—living, working, and playing that mutually reinforce one another provide the foundation for a thriving neighborhood economy.Show More
  • Inclusivity
  • Inclusivity and justice, equity, and diversity are foundational concepts for NoMa’s future. For NoMa as a whole to succeed, the wellbeing of all its residents, tenants, workers, and visitors must be a part of that success. Inclusivity means taking a hard look at ourselves, asking questions, and listening to the answers, but most importantly it means declaring the neighborhood’s ideals and living up to them.Show More
  • Play
  • Play prioritizes fun for the BID’s efforts, informing decisions around marketing, events, public space operations, and even planning. New spaces like Alethia Tanner Park create opportunities for unique events, while better connections to surrounding neighborhoods allow new communities to discover and enjoy NoMa. New mobility options, new retailers, new partners and stakeholders, and a new approach to using public streets to benefit the public set the stage for dynamic changes. Show More
  • Safety
  • Safety is a priority for any neighborhood, and NoMa is not unique in the challenges it faces—roadway hazards, crime, public health issues, and more. But prioritizing safety means thinking differently. Using art to slow down traffic, empowering residents to take care of one another, finding the right experts to provide the right solutions, and using technology to connect people with resources are some concepts that prioritizing safety makes possible. Show More
  • Brand & Reputation means growing NoMa’s sterling reputation for businesses and their employees, and for residents old and new. NoMa is not just a physical place or a place on a map, bounded by roads and railways, but also a conceptual place in peoples’ minds and in their homes. We’re building a name for the neighborhood that is synonymous with fun, with play, with arts, and with culture, and promising that NoMa will be a destination for everyone.
  • Connectivity means understanding NoMa’s streets, sidewalks, trails, and rails as spaces that must serve people first. It means connecting communities and people, enhancing pedestrian conditions and experiences, improving transportation and mobility resources and access, creating innovative ground-level activations and experiential art, actively supporting transit, and reimagining key roads as safe spaces that connect communities instead of dividing them.
  • Economic Development goes hand-in-hand with physical development, but is not a foregone conclusion. It must be planned for, shepherded, and safeguarded through policies, programs, priorities, and placemaking. As a strategic pillar, economic development means ensuring that NoMa remains a resilient engine of growth at the heart of DC and lives up to the ideal of mixed-use—living, working, and playing that mutually reinforce one another provide the foundation for a thriving neighborhood economy.
  • Inclusivity and justice, equity, and diversity are foundational concepts for NoMa’s future. For NoMa as a whole to succeed, the wellbeing of all its residents, tenants, workers, and visitors must be a part of that success. Inclusivity means taking a hard look at ourselves, asking questions, and listening to the answers, but most importantly it means declaring the neighborhood’s ideals and living up to them.
  • Play prioritizes fun for the BID’s efforts, informing decisions around marketing, events, public space operations, and even planning. New spaces like Alethia Tanner Park create opportunities for unique events, while better connections to surrounding neighborhoods allow new communities to discover and enjoy NoMa. New mobility options, new retailers, new partners and stakeholders, and a new approach to using public streets to benefit the public set the stage for dynamic changes.
  • Safety is a priority for any neighborhood, and NoMa is not unique in the challenges it faces—roadway hazards, crime, public health issues, and more. But prioritizing safety means thinking differently. Using art to slow down traffic, empowering residents to take care of one another, finding the right experts to provide the right solutions, and using technology to connect people with resources are some concepts that prioritizing safety makes possible.
Person in red riding a bike in Autumn in the bike lane with tall buildings
This plan finds NoMa as a neighborhood on the cusp.

We’re emerging from our past as the new kid on the block, as the place with the odd name, as the construction capital of DC, and the next phase of our growth has arrived. The vision laid out at the beginning of the plan is rooted in the fundamentals of NoMa—our past, our people, our places—and shows us that we can be a new nexus for District life, an uplifting, vibrant, and dynamic hub of business, culture, art, and community. This vision points the way, and this plan maps the route.

As always with plans such as these, we are well aware that the future is fundamentally unpredictable, but we feel that this plan represents not only our best attempt to foresee it, but also our best approach to achieve it. We could not be prouder of this strategic plan nor more inspired and excited by the vision of NoMa laid out in its pages.

Our goal is straightforward—Make NoMa Magnetic—but it encompasses an incredible amount of hard work, thoughtful intention, meaningful partnership, and enthusiastic dedication on the part of our staff, board, and stakeholders. Succeeding will be challenging, but the NoMa BID team is ready to rise and meet it head-on.

We invite you, whether you are a NoMa resident, worker, business owner, visitor, partner, or just an interested observer, to come and see what NoMa has to offer, today and tomorrow.

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