BID's new website is set to debut this weekend

The BID (Business Improvement District) has been pouring money into a new website to promote the BID and Coconut Grove. Personally, I feel that all those thousands could have gone to free parking and that would have done the Grove more of a service than a website.

Anyway, it's a nice site, there are plenty of things to see and do and it's planned to be rolled out May 1. But then again, it was planned to be rolled out January 1 and then February 1 and so on. So hopefully, it will appear live on Sunday.

Ivan Irias of ID Media (shown standing above) showed the BID Marketing Committee what the website will look like at Tuesday's meeting. He and his staff did an incredible job of wading through lots of information and making it easy to navigate on the site.

Every Center Grove business is on the site and there are nice photos of each business, taken by Javier Lopez-Rosende, there are links to each businesses' website and email and it's very clean and easy to use.

There is a Twitter and Facebook feed, only with Tweets and messages from the BID, which is always guarded and sanitized. I think they should open it up for all Tweets and Facebook mentions of Coconut Grove from anyone. There is an events calendar, a YouTube page and a map of the Grove and a parking map. The site is www.coconutgrove.com.