You Must Remember This: Might Ojai be a model for CdM?
By NANCY GARDNER
We were in Ojai recently, and as we went through the bustling downtown I thought, “This is what they’d like CdM to be.” Yes, once again the Corona del Mar commercial corridor is a focus. Since before I was on council there has been a variety of efforts to somehow remake it. The CdM Business Improvement District did its part, leading the effort to beautify the streetscape with the tree-lined central median, a huge improvement over the stark, uninterrupted pavement of before. The BID’s reward? The then-City Council disbanded it.
That must have put people off because the subject seemed to fade into the background, but it is once again on the city’s radar with a consultant hired and outreach begun. One of the issues addressed in the initial report is parking, a not uncommon theme: If we can just fix the parking….As a result, there have been several parking studies over the years, and they seem to come up with the same solutions. There was one conducted while I was on council, and like today’s study it suggested shared parking. Instead of parking spaces sitting vacant when a particular business is closed, a business with different hours would be able to use them. Nobody had a problem with that, but the proposal to reduce the number of parking spaces required for businesses, particularly restaurants, which is also proposed in the current study? The residents were vociferously negative. Letting business provide fewer spaces might be jolly for businesses but it would result, residents complained, in pushing customer/employee parking even deeper into the residential areas which meant fewer spaces for residents plus unwelcome noise in the later evening. The parking study was quietly filed away.
In addition to improving parking, the current study suggests that another way to improve the corridor is to make it more pedestrian friendly. Here’s some news: It’s already very pedestrian friendly – for residents. We walk to the market, to the hardware store, to get our nails done. We can even drop off our car for a tire change or our dog at the vet and walk home instead of waiting there. If you read the report, though, it’s pretty clear that the pedestrians in mind aren’t residents but visitors. The goal is make them linger, meander, browse. Think Ojai. Unfortunately for the browser, CdM is heavy on fitness studios, hair salons, manicure studios, banks and real estate offices – not the kinds of businesses that invite browsing. It’s no problem for residents. We have a destination when we walk, so if the scenery isn’t that titillating it doesn’t matter, but for visitors?
When I was growing up, the corridor business make-up was quite different. There was a small department store (Haythorne’s) where Bliss is and next to that Brookings, a five and dime. There were dress shops including Hayden’s, a lingerie shop where I bought my dress for senior prom (doesn’t everybody go to the prom in a nightgown?), a camera store, Kay Finch’s pottery, a nursery, a fabric store, a number of restaurants, the Port Theater and many other businesses – in other words a commercial corridor of good variety and health with a composition very different from today.
There are probably a number of reasons for the change, but one big impact was the arrival of Fashion Island. Think of Haythorne’s, the small but successful department store. For years its main competition was other small stores in the city. If you needed a bigger store you had to drive all the way to Santa Ana. Suddenly, within a mile are three department stores – Robinson’s, Broadway and J. C. Penny – with bigger selections and a lot more parking. That’s some competition, and it was the same for the lingerie and dress shops. Those big department stores each had lingerie and dress departments which meant if you didn’t find what you wanted in Robinson’s you could bop over to the Broadway, and then there were all those other stores all in that same spot, plus a merry-go-round for the kids!
The original three department stores have disappeared as has the merry-go-round, but Fashion Island still has a lot of stores, a lot of parking and is still a magnet. An area like Ojai doesn’t have a shopping mall around the corner. It also doesn’t have the physical hurdles of CdM. Highway 33 through Ojai is two lanes as opposed to CdM’s four–plus median. The traffic’s pretty light in Ojai, unlike in CdM, and the shopping area is condensed into a few blocks where CdM stretches for 18. It’s a challenge. What will also be a challenge is balancing resident/business needs and desires. Meanwhile, if you want to see what Orange County looked like in its earlier days, visit the Ojai valley with acre after acre of citrus and funky old houses – and just to reassure you that this is indeed the 21st century, there are a few mansions tucked here and there.
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Nancy Gardner, a former Mayor of Newport Beach is a long-time resident and daughter of Judge Robert Gardner, and past Citizen of the Year. The author of her new Newport Beach mystery novel – “Here Comes the Judge” – she is a regular contributor to Stu News Newport.
