Link
We meant to write a few lines about this before, but it got lost in the shuffle. Frankly, we're all for this idea.
We can't tell you how many City Council meetings we've gone to over the past few years in which one of our main purposes in going was to castigate various City Councils for spending like drunken sailors.
But, it wasn't just spending per se that got our goat, it was the lack of proper priorities to fix our city.
We're of the fish hook instead of a fish view on this and we want the City Council to spend money on fish hooks, not on fish.
Hopefully, the employee group behind this will even start a blog or website to point out where our money is being wasted.
Who better to spot waste than those on the inside?
# # #
GOOD SCHOOL ARTICLE IN THE DAILY PILOT
Link
From the DP article: "The five lowest-scoring elementary schools [in the district] — Adams (768), College Park (743), Pomona (725), Whittier (722), Rea (712) and Wilson (718) — are in Costa Mesa."
The truth about school scores is that they are based on how the students score. They have very little, if anything, to do with funding, the teachers or the school buildings.
The high scoring schools, which are all in Newport Beach, have about the same funding, the same quality of teachers and the same type of school buildings as the low scoring schools in Costa Mesa.
If you have students who score well on standardized tests, the school scores are higher.
And, when you have an upscale area, full of students from upwardly mobile parents who live in those areas, you usually have students who perform better on the tests.
# # #A CAMEL IS A HORSE DESIGNED BY A COMMITTEE
While the CM PRESS has been calling for the City Council and the Planning Commission to dust off the Westside plans and implement them, we have to tell you that there are some possible mistakes in those plans that should not be implemented.
How did possible mistakes get into the plans? They were the result of various compromises made by the committee members--most of whom didn't know anything about how to develop retail shopping areas so retailers can make money.
We do not need more Triangle Squares all up and down W. 19th Street.
Here's a few basics that you need to know about the optimum way to design small retail shopping centers in our area:
1. Retail stores have be on the ground floor.
2. Proper parking should be out front, not in the rear, and not underground.
3. There has to be a proper tenant mix.
4. Ingress and egress must be via wide curb cuts.
5. The parking lots should not be cut up with too much foliage, but should remain as flat and open as possible.
The problem we have with W. 19th Street, as we've written before, is that the lots are mostly very shallow and won't allow for proper parking out front (# 2 above).
The solution is to either find a way to make those lots deeper and then assemble several of them with frontage on W. 19th Street or to try to make a Belmont Shore model work.
Belmont Shore, as you probably know, is a trendy, upscale, neighborhood in Long Beach with the main retail drag being 2nd Street.
The retail stores in Belmont Shore are all right on the sidewalk and the parking is either in front along the curb, in back in small lots, or up and down the residential streets that back up to 2nd Street.
Belmont Shore works primarily because of the upscale demographics of the area. And these demographics overcome any negatives relating to parking and design.
Could the Belmont Shore model work on W. 19th Street?
Possibly, but many other changes would have to happen in the surrounding neighborhoods or the retailers would probably starve.
DEMOGRAPHIC REPORTS
Say you're the owner of a successful retail store, bar or restaurant someplace and you want to expand.
How would you pick a new location? Throw darts at a map? Just guess?
If you're a sophisticated retailer, you'll first find out the demographics surrounding your present successful location and then look for another area that has very similar demographics.
Fortunately, there are such reports for all areas of the country. You can usually get those reports in one mile, three mile and five mile circles, with the one mile circle being your primary market.
So, if you have a business in Belmont Shore, would you find the demographics around W. 19th Street similar to Belmont Shore? The answer is no.
But, say you have a pawn shop or a second hand store in a downscale area, would you find similar demographics around W. 19th Street? The answer is yes.
You see the problem.
# # #
Those are our opinons. Thanks for reading them.
No comments:
Post a Comment