City brainstorms ideas for downtown revitalization but lacks
answers
With millions needed to repair, revamp and revitalize Gilroy’s
decaying downtown area and no money to do it, members of the Gilroy
City Council met anyway Wednesday night to brainstorm ways to
tackle what many believe is becoming a city eyesore.
City brainstorms ideas for downtown revitalization but lacks answers
With millions needed to repair, revamp and revitalize Gilroy’s decaying downtown area and no money to do it, members of the Gilroy City Council met anyway Wednesday night to brainstorm ways to tackle what many believe is becoming a city eyesore.
The prospects were not encouraging.
“There is no source of revenue for the downtown right now and no specific plan either,” said City Administrator Jay Baksa. “Once the RDA (Redevelopment Agency) was stopped, they decided to meet to show proponents of the RDA that there is still hope out there and that they are committed to aggressively finding solutions.”
Two months ago the City Council voted down an RDA, which would have provided tax incentives for downtown revitalization. Now with no money and a crumbling infrastructure at the city’s center, officials say they won’t know if money is available to improve downtown until the city’s General Fund is completed by next spring.
Council members voted down the RDA saying that sales tax revenue would help fund eventual repairs, but the prospect of that money seemed doubtful Wednesday.
“I’m not going to say the RDA would have been the answer to our problems, but it did take a tool out of the tool chest. And California doesn’t have many tools in the first place,” said Baksa.
Currently 78 percent of the city’s general fund goes into public safety. The problem is, city officials say, that by tapping into the General Fund and redistributing money to make the downtown more aesthetically pleasing, the city’s police and fire services could suffer-not exactly the best medicine for a city that’s in the process of building a new fire and police station.
According to Baksa, the city has $24 million in General Fund reserves, but in a sluggish economy that number is expected to dwindle down to $6 million by 2006.
With that being said, the council forged ahead at Wednesday’s study session, brainstorming everything from how to fix the sidewalks and repair old building façades to discussing ways to find outside revenue sources to fund improvements.
Much of the discussion focused on putting together incentives packages that would encourage contractors to build and attract new business to the area. Those incentives included the waiving of all permit fees for construction between Leavesley and Tenth Streets for the years 2004-2006.
Talk also centered on the need to build a parking garage and more housing in the area, which would increase pedestrian traffic for struggling businesses.
One hurdle the city must face is that without an RDA, the city only has control over what improvements take place from one edge of the sidewalk to the other. If current owners of the buildings in the downtown area don’t want to spend the money repairing their properties, there isn’t much that can be done.
And even if the city owned the buildings and could do whatever it wanted with them or the current owners want to fix their properties, repairing them is not cost-effective. Most were built in the early 1900s and don’t come close to meeting 2002 building codes.
“If our building codes were enforced in the downtown area, they’d have to demolish all of them,” said Gilroy City Council member Charles Morales on Thursday.
For just that reason, James Sooner, a Gilroy resident who was considering opening a business in the downtown area, said he couldn’t get a conventional loan.
“These buildings are not going to rebuilt themselves,” said Sooner. “And getting them to code is cost prohibitive. They’re all almost a teardown, not economically possible to save.”
Gilroy Economic Development Corporation Executive Director Bill Lindsteadt agreed.
“When you’ve got unreinforced masonry and asbestos in a building, you’ve either got to pay all cash or you don’t do the work,” said Lindsteadt. “It’s very difficult to get financing on these buildings because they’re considered a liability.”
One thing the city can do is the work on the Streetscape Project. The project calls for the widening of sidewalks, removal of the snake-like chicane lanes, adding landscaping, trees and lighting from Monterey to First Street.
The first phase of the project, which ran from Seventh to Ninth Street, was completed in the summer of 2001 for $1.9 million. The second phase is slated to begin in January. That phase will complete the work from Sixth to Seventh Street at a cost of $1.4 million.
After that, it’s anyone’s guess.
“The phase-two money came from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission,” said Baksa. “It will end right in front of the old City Hall and there is no money in sight for the third phase.”
With Baksa facilitating the meeting, the council also looked at the possibility of waving all impact fees for development in the downtown area or accepting payments over time.
The city also would like to relocate the Visitor’s Bureau to the Old City Hall building on the corner of Sixth and Monterey Streets to attract more outsiders to the heart of the downtown.
There was even discussion on the definition of downtown itself. Was the area to be fixed on Monterey Street only from First to Tenth? Or should it include repairs east and west of Monterey all the way to Railroad Avenue and Eigleberry Street?
“The bigger the area gets, the tougher it’s going to be to finance,” said Baksa.
While there was plenty of questions and discussion there weren’t many answers.
One possible source of funding that was discussed was brought up by Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer, who wondered about seed money for a new program recently launched by the Valley Transportation Authority, which currently is struggling to fund projects as sales tax revenues dwindle.
Under the agency’s Best Management Practices program, which looks at the most aesthetically pleasing standards for cities to adopt, Springer thought that it might be possible to get money for a pilot program that promotes moving parking to the backs of buildings and encourages pedestrian traffic in front.
Another solution for generating money into the downtown area that was looked into is the raising of the city’s Transient Occupancy Tax. The city’s TOT tax is currently at 9 percent, which equates to roughly $900,000 a year in annual revenue for Gilroy. Increasing that by another percentage point would result in roughly another $100,000 annually for the city to siphon from for downtown expenditures.
The only problem is that the tax must be passed by a two-thirds majority of the voters and the city missed its opportunity to get it on the ballot.
In the mid 1990s, the voters rejected a raise in the TOT tax.
