City Playing Active Role in Revitalization of Main Street
By CLAUDIA PESCHIUTTA
Staff Reporter
The word “potential” comes up a lot when Leonel Prats explains why he left a successful business partnership to strike out on his own and open a Cuban bistro on Alhambra’s Main Street.
His partners in the chain of popular Versailles restaurants decided it would be a mistake to expand into the area. But Prats was certain that the sleepy street was on its way to becoming a bustling commercial district.
“My gut feeling is that a restaurant can do well in that area,” said Prats, an architect who designed and built the recently opened Cuban Bistro on West Main Street. “I think the area has great potential.”
Others walking down Main Street, however, might not see the same potential. The commercial district, a strip of several blocks that stretches from Atlantic Boulevard to Granada Avenue, is a mix of fresh, remodeled storefronts and aging facades.
Once a shopping mecca for San Gabriel Valley residents drawn to JCPenney, JJNewbury, Leiberg’s and other Main Street department stores, the area suffered once its big stores left for malls in nearby Arcadia, Glendale and Montebello. As Main fell out of favor in the 1980s, vacant shops and rundown buildings became common sights.
“Back in the ’50s and even into the ’60s, it was a really exciting place to go. It was the place where everybody went to shop and hang out,” said Michael Martin, director of Alhambra’s Development Services Department. “By the early ’80s, a lot of the big users were leaving. As the big users would leave, the smaller users would suffer and then they would close.”
Public intervention
Concerned about the spreading blight, the Alhambra City Council began taking an aggressive approach to revitalization in the 1990s. Julio Fuentes, a former city administrator in both Azusa and Pomona, was brought on as city manager to help revive the area, and he and Martin have since spearheaded the “Alhambra Renaissance,” a movement to remake Main into a more vibrant commercial corridor.
Over the past 15 years, the city has spent more than $15 million on land acquisition, tenant relocation, facade improvements and other business incentives along Main Street, Martin said. Another $11 million have gone into building three parking structures, for which the city stands to get back at least $3 million in taxes.
Many of the efforts have been paid for through grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Other funding has come from city reserves and the Alhambra Redevelopment Agency. The improvements will help downtown Alhambra generate a projected $808,000 in sales tax revenue this year, up from $501,000 in 1990-91, according to city officials.
“In the last six or seven years, the city council and city staff have taken maybe a business-like approach, not a bureaucratic approach, to attracting new tenants,” said Owen Guenthard, executive director of the Alhambra Chamber of Commerce and a city resident for more than 60 years. “(They’re) thinking like developers.”
Even so, some businesses remain hesitant about moving into Alhambra, which is known for its large Asian population.
Martin recalled that one fast-food chain didn’t want to open a restaurant on Main for fear that it would be unpopular with Asian residents. “They opened and they did almost double the sales projections they thought they were going to do,” he said.
Tony Roma’s rejected several overtures, so the city bought an 8,000-square-foot building on the corner of First and Main for $1.1 million and spent $350,000 on upgrades. Then it leased out the property and now the restaurant chain plans to open next month.
‘Just more to do’
Sandie Haleakala, a 29-year-old Alhambra resident, said she now visits Main Street about once a week. “I think it’s good. (There is) just more to do,” she said, during a recent stroll down Main with her mother, Sylvia. “It’s a lot busier than what it was.”
City officials say a lot of work remains to be done. “It’ll be time to stop when major tenants are coming in on their own, not even bothering to talk to us, just going straight to the property owners,” Martin said. “(But) I don’t know if we would ever completely step out.”
The success of the revitalization, added Fuentes, depends on delivering an environment that’s appealing to retailers. “Everybody likes what they hear, they like the pretty pictures, but they’ve been reserved at first,” he said.
