February 2, 2010 -- In the near future, visitors will ride a rail line into Downtown Santa Monica or park in newly rebuilt structures, then they’ll stroll Third Street Promenade lured by its new image or visit a remodeled Santa Monica Place filled with upscale restaurants and shops.

When they do, they will be greeted by Downtown ambassadors instead of panhandlers, the streets will be smoke free, and cabs won’t be clogging every corner.

And when those things come to pass, people will likely look back at 2009 as a major turning point.

Following are the biggest stories of last year, stories that will eventually shape the face and soul of the city's central district.

Fresh Start
The New Year fittingly kicked off with a fresh start for the Bayside District Corporation (BDC), which for a quarter century has shaped and run Downtown. After property owners voted to create a new business district in 2008, a revamped 13-member board took its seats in February and immediately got to work.

Board members approved a budget boosted by some $3.5 million in new assessments used to spruce up the streets and make the area more inviting. Many of the members who would guide Bayside's biggest transformation in two decades were familiar faces.

The board's new chair, Bill Tucker, had headed the previous Bayside Board, having served two four-year terms. Elected to the board's executive committee were five other former board members – Patricia Hoffman, Rob Rader and Johannes Van Tilburg, who were among the six members appointed by the City Council, and John Warfel and Kelly Wallace, who, along with Tucker, were among the six elected by the property owners. A thirteenth member, Elaine Polachek, was picked by the City Manger.

The new board hit the ground running. At its first meeting, board members made appointments to five committees, reviewed a proposed services agreement with the City and learned about some of the pressing challenges facing Downtown. The following month, they approved a budget that set aside $1.3 million for a new ambassador program and $1.2 million for enhanced maintenance.

Making the Brand New
While Downtown Santa Monica continues to draw some 12 million visitors a year and rings up $470 million in sales, Bayside officials decided that 2009 – the 20th anniversary of the area – was the perfect time to revisit a winning formula in the face of stiff new competition.

Taking advantage of an enhanced budget, Bayside officials launched a marketing plan that takes advantage of the latest marketing strategies and technologies to keep visitors coming Downtown and reach out to new markets.

The cornerstone of the new marketing plan is an image makeover that will shape how the popular destination is perceived over the next quarter century by redeveloping a “brand” that evokes the soul of Downtown Santa Monica.

In addition, Bayside officials launched a Buy Local program to encourage Santa Monica residents to spend more of their money in town, entered into a partnership with LA Inc. to help buoy the Downtown tourism trade and hired Ballantine's PR, a boutique public relations agency, to generate buzz about the area.

Helping Hand
In June, a new presence was felt across Bayside as some two dozen Downtown Ambassadors in distinctive uniforms and tan hats hit the streets. Their task: to greet visitors, answer questions and generally point the way. They also would help keep an eye on the street to report maintenance issues, discourage wrongdoing and anti-social behavior.

The ambassadors cover the district on foot and Segway, guiding visitors by directing them to a store or restaurant, helping merchants tackle a problem or alerting work crews when something needs fixing. Although the ambassadors don’t a have the authority to enforce laws, they can keep an eye out on the streets and inform visitors about local laws that prohibit smoking on the Promenade and other select areas, or laws that bar aggressive panhandling.

“The Ambassador Program has made a huge impact in Downtown,” said Andrew Thomas, Director of Operations for the Bayside District. “It brings in a hospitality element that currently doesn’t exist."

A Clean Sweep
Also last year, enhanced cleaning crews bankrolled by the new assessments began scouring the Promenade and surrounding streets, hosing down sidewalks, alleys and parking structures.

The new $1.2-million budget line item both increased the frequency and expanded the area cleaned by power-washing crews. With nearly a dozen workers added, the larger crews began cleaning sidewalks and alleys and deep cleaning the entire Promenade once a month, instead of every three months.

In addition, the Promenade is now also cleaned from property line to property line, instead of eight feet from each curb. The crews also began tackling a larger area, adding Ocean Avenue and the Colorado Avenue alleys, as well as the parking structure stairwells, which had long been the source of complaints.

Homeless
During 2009 – as the economy staggered – Downtown Santa Monica continued to lure the greatest concentration of homeless in the city. According to a one-night census count, the Downtown area bounded by Wilshire and Pico boulevards and Lincoln Avenue and the beach had 197 homeless individuals living outdoors. In addition, 13 individuals were counted in vehicles and two in tents and boxes.

Meanwhile, the City continued trying to address the problem, which routinely tops the list of concerns aired by Santa Monica residents. Nearly 3,000 people received assistance from seven City-funded homeless agencies between July 2008 and June 2009, according to a City staff report.

There were also more than 1,700 arrests of transients during that same period. The City Attorney’s Office filed nearly 2,500 cases involving arrests and citations “in which the subjects involved are usually homeless persons.” These include violations such as illegal camping, abusive panhandling, public urination and sleeping in doorways.

Of the Santa Monica Fire Department’s more than 11,500 paramedic calls, 10 percent were to people who were “clearly homeless.” However, that number is down 24 percent from the previous year.

Bayside did its part, partnering with Chrysalis to hire homeless individuals to help clean the Promenade and awarding local service agencies a total of $50,000 in grants from the Dolphin Change Program.

Curbing Cabs
While City officials cannot regulate the number of homeless on Downtown streets, they can – and did – curb the number of taxi cabs. In 2009, the City Council took steps to slash the number of cabs Downtown by more than half by passing a law that establishes taxi franchises in a popular destination with no current limits on cabs.

Under the law approved unanimously by the council in July, the City will now grant franchises to only those companies with at least 25 cabs and cap the total number of cabs at 250, down from the 522 cabs previously licensed. That limits the number of companies that would qualify to eight, down from 55, although smaller companies can band together to form a franchise.

The new law is expected to improve cab service in a City where taxi rates are erratic, drivers are poorly paid and often nasty, and far too many cabs, some of them old, are polluting and clogging the city’s streets. In fact, before the law was established, Santa Monica had more cabs per capita than anywhere else in Los Angeles.

Train A Comin’
Fewer visitors will need to hop a cab to Downtown Santa Monica after the Expo light rail line that began taking its final shape on paper in 2009 rolls into town. County transit officials decided the extension from Culver City would follow the old red car route into Santa Monica, reaching the end of the line Downtown on tracks running down Colorado Avenue.

The “preferred alignment” – which would continue along Colorado Avenue after making a stop at Bergamot Station – was deemed the least expensive and most direct route, causing the fewest environmental impacts, officials decided.

The trains, which could begin rolling in as early as 2015, will carry between 200 and 400 passengers to the Expo light rail terminal slated to go on the Sears Automotive site at the corner of 4th Street and Colorado Avenue.

Changing Place
On August 6, 2010, visitors Downtown will be greeted by a newly remodeled Santa Monica Place that last year added a growing list of upscale tenants to the 550,000-square-foot mall quickly taking shape at the southern end of the Promenade.

In addition to Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom, retailers that signed on include everything from international boutiques and high-end chain stores to a smorgasbord of restaurants that promise to rival Beverly Hills’.

When it opens, the 30-year-old mall designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry will have been literally turned inside out. Shoppers will enjoy an open sky and diners can take in a sweeping view of the Pacific from the third-level dining deck. The ambitious remodel also boosts available open space and connects the once-monolithic structure to neighboring streets with pedestrian walkways, making Santa Monica Place one of the greenest and greatest malls in the country.

Finding Parking
Bayside and City officials continued tackling the Downtown parking crunch by moving forward with plans to rebuild the smaller structures, finding private spaces for public use after hours and raising the parking rates for the first time in more than ten years.

In September, the City Council considered raising the daily maximum rates from $7 to $9, the evening maximum rates from $3 to $5, and monthly passes from $82.50 to $121, including tax.

City officials hope the new rates will free up the spaces in the structures closest to the Promenade. Under the plan approved by the council, no new public parking structures would be built, a turn-around from the original plan approved by the council three years ago that called for as many as two new structures totaling some 1,000 spaces.

However, the City moved forward with plans to retrofit the three taller structures, finishing two and preparing to start work on the third this month. In 2009, the council also took a major step approving the process of tearing down and rebuilding the three smaller structures.

City officials have committed to periodically revisiting the Downtown Parking Program to gauge demands for parking in the District. The City has purchased several sites where new structures could be built if the need for additional parking arises.

Street Harmony
After the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June that Seattle violated the First Amendment by requiring permits for street performers, Downtown’s musicians, dancers, mimes and a psychic or two banded together to protect the harmonious system that keeps their performances moving and on time.

In July, nearly 100 street performers signed a petition supporting the current ordinance and asking that the City maintain its permit requirements. The council listened, and in October unanimously voted to keep the provisions intact on the Third Street Promenade, the transit mall and the pier.

Numerous adjustments have been made to the street performance ordinance since it was first established in 1989 to address safety concerns on the Promenade. Changes have included a ban on dangerous objects in 1991 and the establishment of a lottery system for performers in 2003.

Smoke Signals
Tenants living in the more than 1,000 residential units that have gone up in the Downtown over the past decade got some relief from their smoking neighbors last year. In January, the City Council unanimously approved a ban on smoking in common areas of multi-unit residential buildings.

The law — crafted to protect the health of non-smokers, while safeguarding smokers from eviction — allows victims of second hand smoke to file a civil action against those who smoke in outdoor common areas, including patios, garden and pool areas and parking lots.

The law requires that a tenant try to reach a solution with the smoker before filing a civil action, including providing written notice of the law and a written request to stop smoking in the property's common areas. Anti-smoking activists think the law doesn’t go far enough and have asked the council to revisit the burning issue.

The new law was part of Santa Monica’s ongoing effort to discourage smoking. Last year, the City launched its latest public awareness campaign aimed at making smokers think twice before they light up. The $150,000 program includes new signage at the Promenade.

Games and Circuses
As the year came to an end, the once-familiar sight of a big top could be seen jutting up just north of the pier. After nearly a decade away, Cirque du Soliel was back in town.

It was a fitting return for an act that first rolled into Santa Monica from Quebec a quarter century ago strapped for cash. Last year, in a little more than two months, Cirque was expected to pump close to $1 million in special events revenues to the City’s Beach Fund, not to mention bring thousands of shoppers and diners Downtown.

Another boost to the local economy will be literally running into the Bayside next year after the City Council in September approved a new finish line for the LA Marathon. Instead of ending in Venice, the 26.2-mile race – dubbed “The Stadium to the Sea” – will finish on Ocean Avenue just north of Santa Monica Boulevard.
Have a great year and let the races begin.