34th St.: the world's shopping mecca.

There is something very stable and family-valued about 34th Street. Over the past century, its identity has been so closely intertwined with Thanksgiving parades and miracles that it is about as Apple Pie as you can get in this fast-paced town.

And lucky for the Street, it didn't fade into a tawdry bazaar of illegal vendors, pickpockets and plastic triangle flags flapping in the breeze.

The formation of the 34th Street Partnership, a Business Improvement District (BID), stopped that downward spiral and inverted it into a cleansing tornado.

"The challenge is really to re-position the street in the minds of the New York shoppers, as well as national chain retailers, as being the preeminent shopping street in the country, which it always was," said Benjamin Fox, executive vice president of New Spectrum Realty Services, who has been hired as a retail consultant to the Partnership.

Despite the loss of long-time retail anchors Orbachs, B. Altman's, A&S, Franklin Simon, Gimbels and Korvettes, 34th Street's open mall atmosphere has reinvigorated itself with 11 shoe stores; appealing retailers such as the Gap, Structure, Express, Strawberry and Bolton's; and is heralding the construction of K-Mart, a Price/Costco, and quietly, a new Disney store.

Industry sources said the deal is signed, but at deadline remains unannounced and no confirmation from Disney was forthcoming. A Disney store would move into the space vacated by the Italy Department Store on the north side of 34th Street, across from the Empire State Building - the number one New York City tourist destination.

Down the street, the multi-tenanted 240,000 square-foot Manhattan Mall is owned by Melvin Simon, and replaced A&S with Stern's. While it duplicates many of the street's retailers, the mall atmosphere attracts its own climate-conscious shoppers, and is another plus for neighborhood office workers.

The 120,000 square-foot Herald Center contains Toys 'R Us, Daffys and Payless ShoeSource.

With 707 retail stores located in the Business Improvement District, only about 7 percent of them are vacant, and most of those are located on side streets.

At last count, 70 of the stores have annual sales revenues averaging over $600 a square foot, and many are the highest producing stores in the chains.

"When you come back to plain old meat and potatoes retailing on a mass level, 34th Street has been right under our nose and offers a retailer the ability to do more sales volume per square foot than any other street in the city," said Fox.

That volume is attracting notice nationwide, and the Partnership will be cheerleading the area at the upcoming International Council of Shopping Centers confab in Las Vegas in May, where retailers meet property owners.

"There are some interesting vacancies on the street and I suspect they will be hotly contended and snapped up," said Dan Pisark, director of retail improvement for the 34th Street Partnership. One of those is the approximately 14,000 square-foot former Merry-Go-Round store on multi-levels in the Empire State Building, while the other is the aforementioned Italy/soon-to-be Disney store at 39 West 34th.

These rare vacancies along 34th Street are pursued by national retailers that recognize its stability, as well as high pedestrian traffic counts.

"We've clocked 7,000 pedestrians an hour passing on the corners," said Pisark.

That foot-traffic count lured Sunglass Hut to the 2,400 square-foot inset of Macy's on the northwest corner of 34th Street and Sixth Avenue. On the other side of Herald Square, HMV Records provides a strong mix of classical and popular music, while on the south, The Gap and Daffy's have the east and western corners respectively.

Meanwhile, the 34th Street Partnership has reclaimed the mini-parks at the crossroads of Broadway and Sixth Avenue from the vagrants, and is in the final stages of reclaiming the sky, as the awnings come down. Herman's was removed earlier this month and there are now only two to go.

Getting an awning down in New York is no simple feat either, and a special law had to be passed to rid the area of what Pisark deemed the "monster canopies."

To help market the area, the Partnership, which is supported by additional property tax assessments on BID owners, commissioned Danth, Inc. to research the impact of local purchasing dollars.

Area Class A office workers alone were estimated to have spent $231.6 million in 1995, just on work day related food and retail items.

The Empire State Building attracts three-million annual visitors, with about 1.05 million of those being foreigners. Of 31 hotels containing 11,304 guest rooms within a 15-minute walk of Herald Square, Danth estimates in 1993, these tourists spent $122 million in New York retail shops.

The residential shoppers come from four boroughs, with the strongest showing from Manhattan - but out of walking distance. With 34th Street having major subway, LIRR, Amtrak and New Jersey Path stops, along with easy bus access, it's not surprising that shoppers are drawn to this area of numerous retailing choices.

The BID is also in the process of instituting a $25 million capital program similar to what has brightened the Grand Central Partnership district - operated by the same group with different boards - with new street furniture, lighting and sloping granite curb cuts.

"There's a distinctive difference between paying into a black hole that's called taxes and paying money to the BID," said property owner Norman Sturner, one of the general partners of Murray Hill Properties, whose office is at Ninth Avenue and 34th Street. "I can point and say to my tenants, 'This is where my money is going.'"

The Partnership operates security and sanitation services and also operates support services for the neighborhood owners and shopkeepers.

"The BID has affected the whole neighborhood very positively," said John Maso, general manager of the Manhattan Mall, "providing not only supplemental janitorial and security, but taking care of the homeless and keeping watch on the various storekeepers."

The BID provides free design guidance for those storekeepers that are lacking in subtlety or merchandising acumen, and also supplies a free lease rider for owners that takes into account through words and pictures the design guidelines for the neighborhood.

"A lot of people have put a lot of money into the appearance of their properties," said Daniel A. Biederman, the BID's president.

These include multi-million dollar upgrades to One Penn Plaza, Two Penn Plaza, Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. Biederman is looking forward to the completion of the Farley Building renovation for Amtrack, and believes Yankee Stadium can do nothing but boost the area's economy.

Ethel Sloan, marketing director for the Manhattan Mall, is also rooting for the home team, as fans could spend time at the mall between work and night games, and gobble up a quick dinner in one of the Mall's 16 food court eateries.

"You cannot give enough credit to the 34th Street BID and Dan Biederman [its president]," said Sturner. "The difference is palpable. The streets are cleaner and the security on the streets is less and less like a Calcutta environment. The last time I remember people with brooms and carts was in the Forties. We're back to that."