Last Wednesday’s economic conference on the State Street vacancy crisis kicked off with a confession: Much of the information that would be presented, retail expert and keynote speaker Midge McCauley said, was nearly two years old. But because so many of the same problems remain, and because most of the commissioned advice McCauley had already offered to city leaders went nowhere, she’d give it again.
McCauley repeated general suggestions on how to enliven the city’s commercial corridor — cater to locals, intermingle businesses, focus on experiential shopping, and so on — and she had specific ideas, too. City Hall, she said, ought to hire a staff “retail advocate” to recruit merchants and hand deliver them to brokers; it should ease design restrictions so retailers can properly brand themselves with “bold and beautiful” signage; and, perhaps most important, Downtown Santa Barbara — the nonprofit membership organization that maintains and promotes State Street — would be wise to reexamine its funding model, a seemingly esoteric detail among a galaxy of problems but in reality a potential game-changer with broad financial implications.
Since the 1970s, Downtown Santa Barbara has utilized what’s called a business-license-based business improvement district (BID) to collect approximately $280,000 a year in fees from 1,400 merchants to pay for operations, such as street cleaning and special events.