Publication Date: Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Boosting business down town
Boosting business down town
(January 28, 2004) New improvement district expects to collect up to $200,000 a year
by Kathy Schrenk
ow that the Palo Alto City Council has approved a business improvement district (BID), downtown business owners can expect more coordinated efforts among themselves and a more organized part in city politics.
The BID, which assesses fees on business owners, could generate $150,000 to $200,000 a year for marketing, communication and physical improvements, according to Palo Alto officials. Fees range from $50 to $500, depending on the size, nature and location of the more than 900 businesses located within its boundaries.
One of the first expenditures from the BID fund will likely be the hiring of a part-time administrator, said Georgie Gleim, owner of Gleim Jewelers, a member of the advisory committee.
Among other responsibilities, the administrator will create a database of businesses and inform them about upcoming promotions, street-cleaning schedules and relevant city meetings. The administrator could also act as a liaison to the city and advocate for businesses' interests. Up until now, a group of volunteers has been handling some of those responsibilities.
BID funding could also be used to produce maps and a directory of businesses, Gleim said.
According to Susan Arpan, economic development manager with the city, visitors to downtown might also see physical improvements like street plantings and directional signs as a result of the new fees.
Business improvement districts, or BIDs, are used by more than 200 business areas in California. Some local examples are Mountain View, Burlingame and San Mateo.
Before coming to Palo Alto five years ago, Arpan worked in San Jose, helping administer business improvement districts in Japantown and Willow Glen. The mechanism helped precipitate the success of Willow Glen's shopping district, she said.
"It gave them a voice," she said. "It represents everybody because everybody pays."
In Willow Glen, the business improvement district brought about tree lighting, improved crosswalks and better signage, Arpan said.
This funding tool also helped awaken downtown Mountain View from its doldrums of past decades and could help Palo Alto recover from the economic downturn of the past few years, officials said.
Mountain View implemented its BID 25 years ago, when its downtown was losing business to shopping malls, according to Karen Cabello, the executive director of Mountain View's Central Business Association for five years.
"It's helped market the downtown as a whole as opposed to businesses trying to market themselves," Cabello said. Merchants in the downtown district have pooled their resources to create a downtown guide, which they distribute to relocation firms, hotels, motels and other businesses.
Not all Palo Alto downtown businesses wanted to form the BID. The biggest opposition came from professional offices, like doctors and lawyers, who didn't think they'd benefit, Arpan said.
Some may wonder why a BID is even necessary.
"At first glance, downtown Palo Alto looks really successful," Gleim admitted, "but it's not as successful as it was a few years ago."
Gleim has been a member of another group, the Downtown Marketing Committee, for nearly two decades. That group organized events and put together a downtown business pamphlet, sometimes with help from the city, she said.
But since budget cuts now make those partnerships impossible, and business owners don't have much time to volunteer, the improvement district is the right tool, she said.
She believes that unifying the downtown businesses as a cohesive group will be worth the money. "If that sense of community can grow, it can do nothing but enhance the downtown," she said.
Arpan is looking forward to the information that will be available through the BID.
"For the first time we have a database," she said. "We're going to be able to track some things, like what kind of businesses are coming in, what's going out."
BID officials can use that information to target marketing towards the kind of commercial ventures that will complement existing businesses, she said.
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