Santa Rosa businesses seek to clean up downtown

Downtown Santa Rosa business interests want a more active role in the management of maintenance, marketing and quality of life issues in preparation for the opening of the reunified Old Courthouse Square.

Property and business owners around the square have formed the Downtown Action Organization in an effort to raise as much as $800,000 annually to make the city’s core cleaner, safer and more attractive to visitors.

“When Courthouse Square is unified, it has to be viewed as a community asset,” said Hugh Futrell, a developer who is heavily invested in downtown. “If people don’t feel safe, if it’s not accessible, if it’s not well maintained, and if the events there are not well managed, then the opportunity is not going to be nearly as successful as it would be otherwise.”

The city’s highly anticipated $10.5 million reunification project is due to be completed this spring, several months behind schedule. The disruptive construction project has stressed existing business owners, including three restaurants that closed, but also attracted major new investment by those, such as Futrell, who believe the new square will play a major role in revitalizing the area.

Futrell has already renovated the former AT&T building into an office building called Museum on the Square, and now plans to turn the historic Empire Building and neighboring structures into a 62-room boutique hotel.

Downtown businesses groups, including the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce and the Coalition to Restore Courthouse Square, of which Futrell is a member, say it is crucial they have a stake in managing the new square and surrounding areas.

“This needs to be a community effort to make this work,” said Jonathan Coe, chamber president. “Ultimately, the success of this is going to depend in large part upon a collaborative relationship between and amongst property owners, downtown businesses and city teams.”

The idea is to create two different downtown districts: one that would assess property owners and one that would raise money from business owners.

Property owners would be assessed based on a yet-to-be determined formula, such as square footage of their buildings, through a Property-based Business Improvement District, or PBID. The owners of first-floor businesses, meanwhile, would be assessed a separate amount under a similar Business Improvement Area, or BIA.

Money raised from property owners would pay for things such as beautification efforts, sidewalk cleaning, downtown ambassadors and trash pickup, while money from business owners would focus on downtown marketing efforts and programming of events in the square, Coe explained.

“What you’re paying for would be a little different depending on which pot you’re paying into,” Coe said.

The way it is currently envisioned, property owners would be broken into three zones. Those closest to the square would pay the “premium” rate, those more than a couple blocks away would pay a lower “standard” rate, while the Santa Rosa Plaza, because it already provides security and landscaping services, would be a lower “supplemental” rate.

The preliminary idea is to have the premium area extend from B Street to E Street, and from First Street up to Fifth Street. The standard area would extend north from Fifth Street to Seventh Street and Cherry Street, and south of First Street to include the Prince Memorial Greenway, City Hall, and Juilliard and Rae parks, as well as Fremont Park to the east. A map is available with the version of this story posted on pressdemocrat.com.

The Business Improvement Area will have similar boundaries and zones, but the details, including the assessment calculation, have yet to be nailed down.

It’s clear, however, that the amount property owners and businesses will be asked to pay will play a significant role in whether the group can win the support of downtown businesses.

Keven Brown, owner of Corrick’s stationery on Fourth Street, said the way the assessments are calculated will be very important, especially given his family is both a building owner and the owner of a 14,000-square-foot business.

“If it’s just by square footage, I’ll be a little concerned,” Brown said.

Overall, however, Brown said he’s thrilled to see the downtown business groups coming together to solve its issues.

“Whatever happens, to have all the players finally coming to the table, that’s what’s really different about this,” Brown said. “That’s what’s great.”

Not everyone is on board. Mark Auerbach, owner of Mark Allen Jewelers, has been one of the most vocal critics of what he sees as the city’s inaction on the homeless problem downtown.

He is willing to pay a small amount to upgrade services, like sidewalk cleaning, but worries the businesses will simply be asked to fund services the city already provides or should be providing.

“I don’t trust the city as far as I can spit!” said Auerbach.

For the cleaning services, which Auerbach says are needed because of the “disgusting” remnants left behind by homeless people sleeping in his entryway, he might be willing to pay $50 a month. But Auerbach feels previous downtown business organizations overspent on staffing, and he doesn’t want to see that repeated.

A previous downtown group called Santa Rosa Main Street failed because it was perceived as being imposed by the city on businesses, but this endeavor is wholly driven by businesses, Coe said.

The group is in conversations with the city about clarifying what services the city will continue to provide, and what services the downtown organization will provide. Basic infrastructure is likely to remain the sole responsibility of the city, he said.

“We’re not going to go out and rewire streetlights or go out and replace pavers that break,” he said.

If the districts are approved and funded, the organization plans to hire three downtown ambassadors to give information and guidance to visitors and resolve issues that arrive, working with police when needed.

It’s not entirely clear how that will mesh with the city’s existing Volunteers in Policing Program, which sends extra uniformed volunteers downtown during the holidays.

In conjunction with the establishment of the two assessment districts, the organization plans to ask the City Council to toughen its rules against issues such as aggressive panhandling and storing personal property in public.

It is envisioned that the downtown zone would have a “code of conduct” that would increase the penalties for certain behavior from infractions to misdemeanors, which police officials have said would give police more leeway to deal with incidents they did not personally witness.

“Part if this has to address, we believe, the challenge of behaviors on the streets of downtown Santa Rosa, because people are experiencing it as unsafe and scary,” Coe said.

Santa Rosa hasn’t taken any formal action to approve the districts. The council will have to agree to have an election establishing the districts. But city staff including City Manager Sean McGlynn, who has had stints in larger cities like San Antonio and New York, is supportive of this type of collaboration, said David Guhin, director of Planning and Economic Development.

How the city and nonprofit group would coordinate services is a subject of ongoing discussion.

“I don’t think there is any intention of turning over management of public space to a private organization,” Guhin said.

The downtown businesses may be taking their cue from Railroad Square, where businesses decided to hire private security last year to patrol their historic business district. Mike Montague, owner of TeeVax Home Appliance and Kitchen Center, said about 20 businesses voluntarily pay $100 to $1,000 per month to fund the service, which he said has vastly improved the issues the area was facing.

Brown said the homeless problem downtown is actually far better today than it has been, thanks largely to the conversion of the Palms Inn on Santa Rosa Avenue to housing for low-income people, as well as the opening of the Dream Center for homeless young adults in Bennett Valley, he said.

“I was pulling my hair out a year ago. I was just beside myself,” Brown said.