The Pacific Beach Planning Group recently brainstormed ideas for transforming the community’s commercial core, with the advisory group’s chair pointing out that “nothing will change” until or unless a funding mechanism is found and put into place.
“We have a lot of exciting things going on with the new (planned) trolley stop, De Anza Cove trailer park closing, the strip mall at 1640 Garnet Ave. reopening and PB Pathways and other planned park and beach improvements,” said group chair Brian Curry. “But our commercial district is lagging behind. I invite all of you to look at the deficiencies of our commercial district and think openly about what we can do to improve it.
“We’ve got to start now on planning it (commercial redevelopment) or it’s never going to happen,” warned Curry, who pointed out that “not one penny will come for it from the city’s general fund.
“We need to find a way to generate the revenues to do it,” Curry concluded.
Acknowledging revenue-generating plans like paid parking have been historically unpopular in PB, Curry suggested that “We have to be willing to bite the bullet in putting suggestions like that onto the table.”
Curry foresees three revenue-generating possibilities to pay for commercial district improvements: property-tax assessments, parking revenues and/or creation of a special business assessment district.
Curry’s call to action gained immediate traction with other members of the advisory group and residents attending the group’s monthly meeting.
Asked about the potential for raising revenues through paid parking, Sara Berns, executive director of Discover PB, the community’s Business Improvement District, noted Little Italy, which has instituted paid parking in its five-block commercial area, generates about $700,000 a year.
“I was skeptical about paid parking until I saw the numbers,” responded group board member Tony Franco, a commercial Realtor. “I feel now it’s a necessary evil if we want to achieve things like clean sidewalks and branding ourselves.”
Berns also talked about a “Garnet Vision Plan” and a “Better Block Concept.”
“The ‘Better Block’ project is a demonstration tool that rebuilds an area using grassroots efforts to show the potential to create a great walkable, vibrant neighborhood center,” emailed Berns after the meeting. “The project acts as a living charrette so that communities can actively engage in the ‘complete streets’ build-out process and develop pop-up businesses to show the potential for revitalized economic activity in an area.”
Berns said the idea is to take one block of Garnet between Mission Boulevard and Bayard Street and implement concepts from the Garnet Vision “using fundraising and community contributions so that we can highlight to property owners, city officials and those looking to invest in the future of the business district the vision we have for our community.”
Berns said the Pacific Beach Hospitality Group has committed some funding already to trim and light the trees on the Better Block.
“As far as implementation goes, really the sky is the limit depending on how much we can fundraise from different sources,” she said. “The idea would be to clean the street in a manner we could if we had funding from a Maintenance Assessment District, for example, add landscaping, street furniture, bike parking or maybe even a parklet.”
Berns added that the first step is to work with a landscape architect or designer willing to sketch the ideas into reality and then move forward on fundraising to make them come to life.
“We (Discover Pacific Beach) will be working with all the community groups, including Beautiful PB, PB Planning Group and PB Town Council, to pull all our resources and hopefully build something great,” she said.
Board member Scott Chipman noted “we have a hodgepodge of decay in our business district,” adding “we have to have a vision and a plan in place (for improvements).”
Longtime PB resident Micaela Porte noted “lots of wondrous things have changed in PB” while adding that the community has a two-mile commercial strip to contend with, not a compact five blocks like Little Italy.
“We’re not a shopping mall,” Porte pointed out. “People don’t come here to shop.”
Planning group board member Paula Ferraco noted the commercial district needs to be viewed “as a totality in all of its parts,” rather than being considered piecemeal, in order for any proposed improvements to work.
“Otherwise, you’ll just be shifting traffic and parking problems someplace else,” she said.
Ferraco added that improving the commercial district will require buy-in from the entire community.
“Any changes we make need to be good for businesses, good for residents and good for the environment,” she said. “If it’s not good for all three, it’s not sustainable.”
The planning group will hold its last meeting of 2015 on Tuesday, Dec. 1, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Pacific Beach Taylor Library, 4275 Cass St.