When you worry that your community business district is having problems, who are you going to call?
Sustainable Seattle.
That is just what concerned citizens of Wallingford, Lake City and North Beacon Hill did last year. The three resulting citizens committees met last week to discuss what progress they have made, how they did it and what remains to be done. A panel of experts analyzed the reports.
All three communities have been working with professional urban-planning staff from Sustainable Seattle, an award-winning, nonprofit, non-government organization that assists communities plan for the future.
WALLINGFORD
Wallingford Boys & Girls Club's Nita Smith and Meagan Sweet and the Wallingford Chamber of Commerce's Karen Buschow represented the Wallingford business district planning effort.
Buschow said that many of the senior chamber members are becoming much less active because they are just tired and ready to pass the torch. Still, the chamber is trying to get broader involvement in the district through various small projects.
One such project is Wallingford Saves. That project has a system by which participating businesses will honor receipts from other participating businesses as discount coupons. The goal is to get shoppers to spend more time in the business district and visit more of the shops. All the participants at this time are independent businesses (for more information, go to www.wallingfordsaves.com).
Although there are about 100 chamber members, the group wants to get more businesses involved. One way they are doing that is one-on-one contacts.
Plans also call for replacing the street banners that have been in place on poles along 45th Street for about eight years. That projects calls for getting area children involved in the design, asking people and businesses to "adopt a banner" and create small projects, like planters, that will make it nicer to walk along 45th Street.
Jennifer Davis Hayes, a professional urban planner now working on the Renton downtown project, and Hector Saez, an instructor at the Bainbridge Sustainable Institute, were the panel members.
Hayes complimented Wallingford on the apparent vitality of its chamber. She added that establishing rapport with the various businesses is an important step to take before approaching them for involvement in projects.
"I think your community is doing the right thing," Saez agreed. He said it is important to get businesses to feel as though they are involved in what is happening in the community. He added that Buschow's observation that the majority of Wallingford's merchants are "mom-and-pop" operations could be the focus of an advertising campaign.
Saez also recommended investigating the notion of a community credit union or savings and loan association that would help bind the community.
LAKE CITY
Lake City is trying to bring its residential community and business district together, according to Cheryl Klinker, who chairs the Greater Lake City Community Council. She said one of the big obstacles is that the residents are willing to meet in the evening, but the business owners mostly live outside Lake City and leave for home at 5 p.m.
However, one of the big community successes was with the area's homeless community. "This is one of the problems that really brought people together," Klinker said.
Recognizing that the homeless must go somewhere, the Lake City chamber formed a partnership with the police and city parks department to find out what services are provided for the city's homeless and worked to funnel the people into official channels.
The chamber is surveying businesses to find out what they need and how the chamber can help. The chamber also hopes to attract some new, small businesses besides cell-phone sales and beauty salons.
Saez said that these are typical community problems. Perhaps the community can stimulate entrepreneurs with the resources needed to start small businesses, he suggested.
"If you identify the needs, there could be processes to fill those needs," Saez said.
The group broke up into networking and brainstorming after the formal presentations.
Look for these community councils and chambers of commerce to have more developments.
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