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Change is Good
April 24, 2008
I’ve ranted a lot in these posts about how change is necessary if Old Town is going to survive as a commercial entity when stacked up against the ever-present Marketplace, the new Legacy and the soon to be redeveloped City Center.
In fact, I’ve gone so far as to suggest that the city’s “lead from behind” strategy for downtown over the past 25 years has been less than successful, and that possibly a new plan of action should be considered if any different results are to be expected.
Well, that advice goes for the inhabitants of Old Town as well. Merchants (myself included) can’t expect to sit back and ask the city to spend money, amend laws or expend energy in the district if there’s no corresponding action by those that stand to benefit from any resulting largess.
By all accounts, the Tustin Old Town Association was ineffective at best in spurring a renaissance for El Camino Real and Main Street. And I say this as the de facto head of the organization for two years (if you can call a group averaging 10% meeting participation an organization).
So, taking my own advice, since past efforts have proven ineffective, TOTA needs to be replaced by something better.
Secondly, instead of just preaching to the converted in sparsely attended meetings, this new business co-op should distribute a regular newsletter to every commercial entity in Old Town along with the Conservancy and the Historical Society members. The newsletter should accept paid advertising and list each paid merchant member.
Thirdly, member dues should be meaningful. Historically, the miniscule annual association fee was just small enough to accomplish two things – barely pay the group’s annual insurance premium, and guarantee that no one took membership seriously. After all, how much change can you expect for 9 cents a day? It created the net effect of allowing the organization to tread water.
Increased dues will accomplish the following for members:
- Guarantee participation in at least one co-op advertising purchase each quarter. The more members, the bigger (or more frequent) the ad and/or the bigger the publication.
- Fund the creation and distribution of the local newsletter mentioned above.
- Give each member business it’s own original web page (or link to an existing one) and a searchable listing on the Merchant site. (in fact, searching Old Town Tustin on Google yields first page results for this site already, including many of these posts. This has been the one bona fide success along with the Flea Market, over the past two years as over 1000 people a week visit www.oldtownobserver.com)
- Give tustinoldtown email addresses to any member that wishes to have one.
- Guarantee at least one home page business profile per year to a local business or group.
Through the resulting advertising campaign, the Association should attempt to forge a singular, new image for downtown. That is, Old Town as the home of the Mom & Pop Restaurant. Nowhere else in Orange County can you find a such a concentration of excellent owner operated, non-chain, restaurants with award winning chefs.
Everyone has to eat. It should be the mission of the new Association to make sure people in Tustin, Orange, Santa Ana and Irvine always think of Old Town Tustin when they want a good, original meal.
Funny thing, after people eat, they like to walk around, pick up a latte and shop. The great restaurants will get them here. Everyone in Old Town will benefit. And with a dozen eateries already and one or two restaurants arriving with Prospect Village, getting the message out will be easier now than at any time in Old Town’s past.
What do you think?
As always, see you on Main Street.
Comments
4 Responses to “Change is Good”
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as a Tustin resident and frequent visitor to old town restaurants I have to agree with i have to agree with your last remarks about great dining drawing people (like me) in. Old town Tustin has so much potential for a vital economy. But i think old town lacks diversity when it comes to nightlife. There’s no real window shopping for folks to enjoy and there is no outdoor dining or musical entertainment. in order for people to take to the streets on foot, you need outdoor draws. The best place to start would be to move the farmers market to Wednesday night instead of midday. The nighttime farmers market in Fullerton is a great success. This would allow more working people to take advantage of it and result in some overflow into area restaurants. Add a free concert during warm summer months and you would have an instant old town revitalization project under way.
Jordan,
I agree that Old Town lacks some diversity. The lack of (live) music is particularly ‘loud’. I personally think some evening jazz would add a nice alternative crowd. I’m pretty sure a restaurant or two would keep later hours to pick up on the extra foot traffic.
Ironically, the old TOTA tried to get the Farmers Market to change their time. In what ended up being one of the most rude conversations of my professional life, the syndicate that owns the market not only wouldn’t entertain the move, they threatened to pull out entirely and lean on the vendors if we even thought about bringing in a second market (say on Friday night). Go figure. The city wasn’t much help because the market pays rent to a private land owner for the right to set up each week.
I would love to get to the market myself, but I’m almost never free Wednesday afternoons.
Hopefully letters like yours and sites like this will spark something downtown. With a dozen restaurants, it wouldn’t take much to reach critical mass. And who knows, with the dozen shops opening in Prospect Village, we might soon get some interesting window shopping.
I am a young and relatively new resident of Tustin, and stumbled onto this post due to a growing interest in city affairs. This is exactly the type of discussion that I was curious about, and whether or not it was even taking place. While I agree with a lot of what the original poster is talking about, I don’t think the goal should be to necessarily aspire to the likes of the Marketplace or the new Legacy (although I may be misinterpreting that part). Those types of shopping mega-centers are a dime-a-dozen in Southern California, and I believe Tustin has the potential to be one of the most unique and desirable areas of Orange County.
There is an absolutely outstanding base to build from in this small town, and it almost feels like it’s on the verge of being found. But I think the only way to nurture that development is going to be with a strong emphasis on preserving the charm of Old Town, and the historic aspect of the city–it just needs to be polished up a bit. If this has been the same story for the last 25 years, I can see how people might be a bit skeptical, but from my perspective (as a recent resident only here for 1.5 years), I’m just amazed that Main & El Camino Real hasn’t become the center of a vibrant night life and local hot spot. But I would sooner look to a place like downtown Savannah, GA as a larger scale model than some place like the Marketplace or Tustin Legacy.
I don’t currently have the experience to know how one goes about promoting that kind of development, but I like the ideas put out so far. A night time farmers market would be great, and any additional weekend events like the flea market would certainly help as well. Prospect Village certainly seems like a step in the right direction too. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but it seems like the first step is getting some people on the streets.
With regards to Prospect Village and window shopping:
Responding to a plea from the developer that they couldn’t effectively sell the spaces in this economic environment (prior to completion of construction - in other words, before they tried), the City agreed to amend the existing zoning ordinance to allow approximately half of the 1st floor commercial spaces to be developed into office space (which ironically would be exactly the opposite of why Prospect Village was brought into existence in the first place).
That is unfortunate as (my opinion) transforming Old Town into what it could and should be, requires a firm hand to shape the activity that is allowed to blossom there.
While sticking to ones guns and requiring true retail presences in and around the main thoroughfares might entail some short term pain, the long term consequences (like real estate offices, mortgage firms, the Chamber, etc. occupying prime locations for years on end) are much worse - a dead, underperforming, unrealized downtown. Certainly the latter course has been followed for the better part of three decades and what we have now is the result of that.
It should be noted that the city plan requiring retail in Old Town was amended in the last two years to only apply to the main streets of Main & El Camino Real. The thinking in City Hall was that any occupancy was better than no occupancy on the connecting side streets. I agreed with this at the time in exchange for the strengthening of rules defining what “retail” was for the main streets in hopes of attritioning out businesses not conducive to foot traffic & window shopping.
Unfortunately, since then this has not happened even when the opportunity has presented itself. And the Prospect Village cave-in only emphasizes the point.
However, through the heroic efforts of existing retailers and restauranteurs, downtown seems to be on an upswing, if you’re grading on a curve. Hopefully this organic effort is sustainable and we’ll see it reach critical mass in the next couple of years. Personally, I think if the music scene got a foothold (think feature articles in OC Weekly etc.), word would get out and the rest would follow.
-gb