Get to Know Your Community Organizations: North Park Main Street

Note: This new series will highlight Uptown’s various community groups, both volunteer and funded, providing information on available services and how to get involved in neighborhood efforts. This issue: North Park Main Street’s Elizabeth Studebaker.

Por Christy Scannell

Elizabeth Studebaker joined North Park Main Street as executive director in January 2007. I sat down with her on October 20 to talk about the successes and challenges she’s seen in the North Park business district.

Q: What is North Park Main Street?

A: North Park Main Street is a business improvement district (BID). In California state law there are certain actions that need to take place for a business improvement district to form. There needs to be a city-sanctioned election for all the business license holders in the geographic boundaries of the BID. The businesses are required to vote in creation of a business improvement district, and they also need to vote on at what level they’ll be assessed on an annual basis.

Q: What is the significance of the “Main Street” title?

A: The city of San Diego recognizes us as a BID. But for the state of California and national Main Street organizations, we’re a Main Street. “Main Street” means we have two fundamental principles that justify our existence. Number one is supporting small, independently-owned businesses. Number two is historic preservation. The national Main Street program is a project of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. So this effort by the National Trust to create a Main Street program was basically Washington D.C.’s way of saying commercial cores are really important to preserving the American way of life. They are the backbone of our economy. They are central meeting places that keep people together and cohesive as communities.

Q: Are there other Main Street programs in San Diego?

A: In the city of San Diego, there are two Main Street programs: North Park and Ocean Beach. In the county there are many Main Street programs but some of them go by different names. In Chula Vista, the Third Avenue Village Association is a Main Street program. Coronado has a Main Street program. There are a lot in North County – Leucadia, Solana Beach, Del Mar, Oceanside, Encinitas.

Q: When was North Park Main Street established?
A: 1985. The North Park BID was the second in existence behind the Gaslamp District. And because we’re so old, we historically had the smallest geographic footprint, until last year when we held another ballot (in June 2008) to expand the business district geographic boundaries and increase the assessments.

Q: What are the BID’s boundaries?

A: The current boundaries after expansion are along University Avenue from Florida Street to the 805, and along 30th Street from Thorn north to Howard. The direct other side of the 805 is City Heights’ BID. So we’re pretty much locked in except for on the south side, geographically.

Q: What was the expansion?

A: South we used to end at North Park Way. So that’s a huge jump from North Park Way to Thorn. And then on the north side we ended at Lincoln. So from Lincoln to Howard was the expansion. And then on the west side our district used to end at 28th Street, so right near the Mission café.

Q: You clearly acquired many new members with the expansion.
A: But also areas that need significant amounts of support. If you look at the area in the historic boundaries of the business district, you can tell that having a Main Street program helps business, helps economic vitality, helps with public infrastructure improvements, helps with pedestrian accessibility. We have historic lampposts here in the older district. In the expansion area they’re kind of city standard. The sidewalks are in better condition here. And that’s just from 20 years of having an advocate saying this is our district and we’re here to support businesses.

Q: What fees are assessed for the BID?
A: They pay the normal city fees and there’s an additional assessment, anywhere from $125 to $500 per year based on the size of your business. We measure size on full-time employees. Ninety percent of the businesses here have six employees or fewer so most of them pay $125 or $150. A very small percentage pay the high range. We don’t assess home-based businesses in our BID and we don’t assess folks that rent chairs in salons.

Q: Do you receive federal funding as part of the Main Street association?

A: No, we actually pay to be members of the national Main Street program. But that annual membership that we pay – it’s only a couple of hundred dollars – provides us incredible resources in terms of professional development and access to financial reports, demographic reports, and business trends nationally. It’s worth every cent of the membership. And it also creates an incredible sense of cohesion and it’s a really strong networking system.

Q: How is that structure different from the city’s BID system?

A: The citywide BID system is a similar support network but it’s different. The BID council supports the 15-member BIDs in the city of San Diego. They’re primarily there to help with communications and working with the city at the local level. We share costs for special event equipment and things like that. Whereas the national Main Street is more big picture. So I tend to rely on both, but for very different things.

Q: How many members does North Park Main Street have?

A: We have about 500.

Q: How is your board of directors structured?

A: The board of directors is 15 members. At any given time at least 12 of those board members have to be business tax certificate holders so they have to be small business owners or a delegate from a business. We do allow up to three seats for associate members. We have elections every year in September.

Q: What are some examples of membership benefits?

A: The city of San Diego is not responsible for replacing sidewalks that are adjacent to private property. But what we’ve been able to do in the past is work with City Council members in identifying particular blocks that are of special significance to the growth and prosperity of the district and say, look, we know you’ve got some funding for pedestrian amenities, why don’t you invest in sidewalks? It’s basically having a voice at City Council, whereas many small business owners don’t have the time or the ability to go down to City Council themselves and advocate for things that are going to make their business community healthier. On the individual level, we help match a lot of potential business owners with property owners based on the size of spaces available and what kinds of amenities people are looking for.

Q: Are members obligated to consult North Park Main Street before making changes to their businesses?

A: It’s voluntary, so no business is required to come to work with us. By their very nature small business owners are independent people. So I’m respectful of that and understand that not everybody wants to work with us and they don’t have to. But if they do want help we’re there to help with signage design and size, façade painting, color for interior and exterior. Our design committee is made up of about seven architects, landscape architects, interior designers. So there are a lot of resources and we hope people use us as that kind of resource to make their business as visually strong as it can be.

Q: What other committees do you have?

A: We have an economic restructuring committee that is working on a comprehensive community profile right now, which is meant to be a tool for recruiting new businesses – and specifically the types of businesses that would be a good complement to existing tenants. They focus on things like demographics, where the flow of money comes in and out of the community, what we can support more of, what we have too much of – those sorts of things. So we try to monitor that and sometimes actively target businesses to move in.

Q: Do you ever discourage a business from coming to North Park?

A: There comes a point where there aren’t enough customers to support every business of the same type. We encourage every potential business owner to invest in North Park and to come here but I’m also very realistic with people about what they can expect in terms of foot traffic and average daily cars that are going to drive past their store. If they think they can make a go at it and they’re going to be successful even working against the numbers, then we’re there to support them.

Q: What has been North Park Main Street’s greatest success since you’ve been director?

A: Getting new sidewalks on 30th Street and also on University in front of the Mission (Café) was incredible because it was a project that was funded about three or four years before I started and no one was ever able to get it completed. So focusing on pushing that forward and really getting that done while Toni Atkins was still in office was huge. Also, the fact that we just planted 50 trees at 30th and Upas was a really big success. I view a lot of our successes in terms of the types of the businesses that are interested in coming here. I see places like Rufskin as an incredible compliment to our district because they are international, they are already established as a designer jean company and they could afford to move to any neighborhood they wanted to. And they chose to move here. And that is a huge compliment to not necessarily what Main Street’s doing but what North Park is becoming.

Q: How did the North Park parking garage (which opened in 2005) affect the district?

A: I think the movement of The Linkery from their original location to North Park Way and 30th was a huge victory for everyone in this community. That was a direct result of the presence of the parking structure. And I pretty much know that they wouldn’t have moved in and neither would have Urban Solace – they wouldn’t have invested in that renovation – without the existence of the parking structure.

Q: What challenges have you faced and overcome as director?

A: The first challenge I was placed with when I arrived was budgetary. Historically Main Street had received supplemental contract funding from the Redevelopment Agency somewhere in the neighborhood of $80,000 a year. As I was hired, the mayor started cutting all the contracts the Redevelopment Agency had with community organizations and ours was one that was cut. So when I started the board basically said we have enough money to pay you for a year but we can’t promise anything after that. But we were able to get the Farmer’s Market up and running (July 2007). And then our expansion ballot was a huge success. My board would consider those two things huge successes because they were protective of the organization and our existing members. We can’t support any programs if we don’t have staff.

Q: What challenges are you facing now?

A: As we’re becoming a district that’s very sought after and a draw to many different types of people – especially on the weekends – there’s a lot of regular daily maintenance that isn’t being provided by the city and that our Maintenance Assessment District (MAD) is restrictive on in terms of those services. So we’re seeing an increase in the amount of trash that’s on the sidewalks. We don’t have the type of professional security to keep our community safe. As a business association we don’t have funding to support those kinds of efforts. The MAD engineers’ report doesn’t allow it – and the city of San Diego, they’re cutting services.

Q: How do you plan to tackle that problem?

A: What we’ve started doing is talking with the MAD about re-balloting, maybe next year. There’s discussion about splitting off into more than one group so it’s not just greater North Park as one maintenance district but that the residential needs would be serviced by a different administering group than the commercial district. Main Street would be interested in taking care of those services. But we need the property owners to assist in financing.

Q: How is North Park unique?

A: The historic buildings, and North Park has so many interesting stories from the 1880s until today. There are so many people here that have been here for a long time – you can tell in the stories that they tell and their sincere feelings about this place that there’s something special about it that’s almost difficult to put into words. It feels like a small town and a big city all at the same time.