|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The City Council had some difficult conversations about downtown Pleasanton that ultimately ended with a request from the dais — downtown property owners and businesses will need to team up with the Pleasanton Downtown Association to come up with ideas to reinvigorate Main Street.
During the Jan. 21 council meeting, the dais unanimously agreed to match funds to the PDA for the 2025 annual assessments, which will be around $80,000, rather than approving staff’s proposed new one-year contract that would have only matched half of that amount. Several councilmembers agreed that reducing the amount of matching funds was not the right path to take if the city wants to grow the downtown’s economy.
“I don’t think by reducing the small amount of money like that, that it’s going to serve our interests downtown,” new Councilmember Craig Eicher said during the meeting. “We need to help the business district and we need to be more engaged with them to help generate economic vitality downtown.”
However, the council unanimously agreed that they did not want to pursue staff’s separate recommendation to begin the process of possibly forming a Downtown Property & Business Improvement District (PBID), which staff said would have generated more revenue, because of various concerns regarding the lack of support from property owners regarding the PBID and because the potential impacts that could come from the increased fees.
“It’s still a significant amount of money, which is an added tax on the business, so I’d hate to see that affect our downtown even further in a negative way,” Eicher said. “We need to find a way to balance this out a little bit so that it’s equitable for everybody and that the stakeholders actually get a say in what’s going to happen.”
Over the past few years, some longtime storefronts in downtown have become vacant — one prominent example being Clover Creek’s move to the Raley’s shopping center. Those property vacancies, coupled with parking, have been some of the top challenges for downtown Pleasanton property owners, according to staff’s presentation on Jan. 21.
That’s why staff have been working with consultants over the past four months to evaluate the current Downtown Pleasanton Business Improvement District (BID) structure, which is managed by the PDA, and the feasibility of instead creating a PBID.
Established in 1989, the BID is a yearly fee that businesses have paid in order to help the PDA fund parking facility construction, public decorations, events and other general retail promotions.
But because the BID hasn’t been updated since 1989, staff wanted to take the chance to look at what the formation of a more expansive PBID would do for the city.
According to staff, a PBID essentially offers supplemental services and improvements beyond local government and is funded by special parcel assessments. Those services are chosen by property owners but they must provide a special benefit to the community.
The services are funded by an assessment on the property, which would appear on a business’s property tax bill once a year.
“It is intended that the completion of this project will identify the priorities of stakeholders and focus on strengthening existing downtown businesses and attracting new businesses to create a balance of commercial offerings for the community,” city economic development manager Lisa Adamos said.
Adamos explained that in the previous agreements with the PDA, the BID assessments plus the city’s match accounted for approximately 34% of the downtown association’s operating budget, which she said is not enough given that the PDA has had to reduce its staffing over the years in order to balance its budget.
“It has been apparent that the funding generated does not provide a sufficient revenue to support the PDA in meeting our shared expectations to sustain and increase vitality in the downtown,” Adamos said
According to Adamos, a PBID could raise significant revenue to provide additional or new services for the benefit of the downtown property owners and district. It would also allow property owners to choose the services that would be funded by the PBID.
Some of the services staff said could be funded by the PBID could include marketing and events, business development initiatives, maintenance and other capital improvements.
Mayor Jack Balch said one of the things he did like about the PBID process was that he thought it appeared to be “a bit more equitable method of how to allocate contributions to the pot based on square footage versus the current method we have.”
Despite going over the dollar amounts and the different scenarios where the PBID fees would range from $125 to $375 for a 2,500-square-foot restaurant on Main Street or $629 to $1,887 for a 16,777-square-foot retail shop on Rose Avenue, one main issue that came up during the meeting was the lack of support from property owners who wanted the council to press pause on the formation process.
According to staff, the city emailed online surveys to owners and held an open house in order to assess what the over 100 downtown owners thought about the idea of forming a PBID.
Out of the 116 property owners who would be part of the PBID, 16 showed up to an open house and 47 responded to an online survey, staff said. About 12% of respondents were opposed to the idea, meaning the city was not able to engage with 55% of the owners.
A few of those downtown property owners did show up to the council meeting and the overall consensus from them was that the city needs to give the rest of the owners time to come together with the PDA in order to figure out better ways to improve the economic vitality.
That collaboration was also what several of the council members wanted to see, especially Councilmember Julie Testa who said the onus shouldn’t solely be on the city to reinvigorate downtown Pleasanton.
“To move forward without the support (of property owners) doesn’t make sense,” Testa said. “Donwtown is the heart of the city, it is the jewel of Pleasanton and absolutely it should be invested in, but not just the city. It should be the business owners, it should be everybody investing in it.”
Eicher added that he believes there needs to be a lot of work done regarding outreach and working with property owners to “find out what they want, what direction they want to go and realizing that we are going to have some financial obligations to meet here both from the city side and from the PDA side.”
“They’re going to need to find a funding source and that may mean increasing the current BID, it may mean a PBID in the future with maybe a more moderate increase,” Eicher said.
In the end, the council unanimously agreed to postpone the PBID discussion for one year and gave direction to the business owners and the PDA to provide the city ideas on how they can all effectively invest in downtown Pleasanton.
“The city is pausing so that the owners and the PDA membership can lead,” Balch said. “Show us how and where we need to go to get this downtown reinvigorated.”
The council also agreed to have staff come back in six to nine months for a check in because they didn’t want a year to pass without any work being done. They also gave a little leniency on the time for the check in so that the PDA can hire a permanent executive director because as Testa said, she doesn’t think having someone living out of state running the PDA is the best framework when it comes to addressing challenges in downtown Pleasanton.
Laura Brooks is currently the interim executive director of the PDA — she returned to the position temporarily three different times amid turnover since first stepping down to move to Alabama in 2019. According to staff, the PDA is set to begin interviewing candidates next month.
Separately, the council also approved a motion to match funds to the PDA, which manages the BID, as part of the annual Business Improvement District assessment.
Just like previous years, the city anticipated that its matching funds for the 2025 annual assessments will be around $80,000. Staff had come to the council during consent calendar, which are items considered routine in nature and are approved by a single vote, to approve a new one-year agreement to match up to 50% of the funds.
However, after several public comments and discussions, they decided to fully match the funds.
“When I see you guys pulling back funding from the PDA … we’ve only got one downtown and once you guys let it go, once you let it rot, it’s gone,” Mike Madden, former PDA president, said.
“If we’re going to trim things out, this is not where we need to start given what benefit it gives to our city,” new Councilmember Matt Gaidos said.
During this separate portion of the meeting, a lot of the discussion revolved around giving the PDA money, despite not seeing anything change over the past years.
“I don’t think giving them the $80,000 is going to make any difference over what they’ve done the last few years,” Testa said. “I think there needs to be some real changes.”
Testa said she thinks the PDA should be focusing on more events, such as the First Weekend on Main street closures, and was confused to hear that the association is only planning on two regular closures this year.
Others like Bruce Torquemada, who owns 11 businesses in downtown Pleasanton, said there needs to be more done in order to revitalize the area so that the city can compete with other cities like Livermore, which another public commenter said just opened its third parking structure.
“I’ve done business in Livermore, it’s better, ” Torquemada said. “It’s easier, it’s more vibrant. My own kids go to Livermore before they go to Pleasanton to do things.”
That’s why Testa doubled down near the end with saying that she supports fully matching the funds, but she also wants assurance from the PDA that they will be looking at different ways to reinvent the downtown, which could be a possibility now that several of the property owners at the meeting agreed to begin those joint discussions.
The no growth near Downtown has and will continue its decline. Just look at the housing Livermore has and continues to build near its downtown. These residents are all a short walk from downtown Livermore. That is how downtowns are built.