Interview with Uptown Partners
Uptown Partners is a new non-profit organization focusing on the issues for economic and community development for both Bixby Knolls and North Long Beach. We talked to Lauri Angel, who used to be Chair of North Project Area for Redevelopment and now holds a leadership role with this new organization, told us about the effort to improve the business districts throughout North Long Beach.
Is Uptown Partners the official name? Uptown Partners is not official but what we're using for now. I kind of hold a leadership role but there are several people working on it. I run the meetings because that was what I was doing with the North Long Beach Project Area Committee. There is about 6 or 7 PACs in Long Beach. North was the largest by a huge amount. We were generating the most tax increments (tens of millions of dollars per year). We've been in existence since 1996. We weren't done with what we needed to do, and with redevelopment going away in February this year we need to figure out a way to continue to move forward with the plans that redevelopment started.
Is this all being moved by volunteers right now?
Yes. It's a community effort. We have no money or quite an organization yet. We need to create an organization that will help us continue to move forward and it's not easy.
Are their any specific goals of this organization yet?
We're just getting started. We're brainstorming. We have a few things we're probably going to work on. We need to attract some funding. Some people that will invest their money, time, effort to development in the area. We have to actively pursue grants and funding sources. And we want to help retain and train business owner, so that they are more effective.
Are there particular areas you are focusing on?
The corridors for the most part. Atlantic, Long Beach, Artesia, South Street.
Are their any businesses that are interested?
We are not that far along yet. It's going to take us a year to get formed, to come with goals and an infrastructure. We don't even have an official membership yet. We just created our bylaws last month. We just had a mission and vision statement brainstorming session last week. So we just created a form for membership and sent it out to the 7th, 8th and 9th council district and several individuals that are interested. We've informed people that the membership is available, and we have let people know on the facebook page. It's just going to take some time to pull it together.
Do you have people who are interested in helping fund this organization?
Well, I went to the annual chamber of commerce meeting for long beach and I ran into some individuals who work for banks. Usually they have a certain amount that they donate to the community, so I found somebody that might be interested there. I'm using social media a lot. I've gotten really engaged with linked in. I've joined a lot of economic development, community development, non-profit developers planning, anything that has to do with improvements in the area. And the senior corp of retired executives. They're people who have been in business for decades, now they're retired and want to help people for free basically. So I've plugged into a whole lot of different networks and cultivating connections. The career center in Long Beach. LBCC, dean of the school of business, the head of student services (Ted Robinson). So I'm just cultivating connections right now. It takes a while for it all to come together.
Basically it is making business successful, creating jobs, making the area more economicall viable. And even Bixby Knolls, it has improved immensely but the still have a ways to go.
In what ways do you think they could improve?
Well, they still have vacant properties and people who don't take care of their properties. They still need crowd improvements. Businesses struggle because they are at the mercy of the economy and how often people go shop, and it is difficult for smaller businesses. It is a constant effort to try to attract business, retain business, grow business, and to make people successful. And small businesses struggle. They are the backbone of the economy in many ways, but they struggle too. So we want to be able to support them in their efforts to be successful.
So one of the key things we're trying to do as a community is to work with businesses for our mutual benefit. So we get the services that we want in our community and we get businesses in place to serve the community. So businesses thrive and the community thrives. At least that's how it works theoretically. It's kind of an experiment.
So is the down economy what brought on this project?
No, it was the demise of redevelopment.
When did that start?
Well, the governor had put the elimination of redevelopment and the creation of a new kind of redevelopment of agency... If redevelopment agencies donated $1.7 billion to the state. So the people in redevelopment felt like they were being held hostage, so they took the item to court and the courts ruled in favor of the state and they also said that the state also had no right to take those funds. So what it did, in one bill they eliminated redevelopment and in the second bill that was supposed to recreate redevelopment and allow for us to give money to the state, they took away the option for us to recreate redevelopment. So, effective Feb 1st redevelopment went away. And believe me, that was worth tens of millions of dollars to the city of Long Beach. And that is what made the improvements you see in Bixby Knolls and Long Beach, redevelopment did that. And so we are trying to form this organization to replace the tens of millions of dollars that are no longer going to be coming in.
I actually heard that a lot of other non-profits are really suffering because their budgets were basically cut in half.
Well it's because all the government agencies are reducing their budgets because they are not taking in enough money because the economy is down. We're really not in a great cycle. I mean, we're hearing that it's improving but the improvements are slow. There really isn't a way for this to all resolve. The only way it is going to resolve is if you get good strong businesses and give people jobs, and that is what we're trying to do.
We are covering the differences between Bixby Knolls and the rest of North Long Beach, do you think that there is a sense of separation?
Well the main difference is the demographic. There are some common elements to all communities but there are differences as well. We are a lot more diverse economically and ethnically in North Long Beach. We have a lot more people that are not able to make a lot of money or there are a lot of issues with gangs that they don't have in Bixby Knolls. Because there is a perception of safety, we have a lot of businesses that don't want to come in.
But we have very good neighborhoods. Our corridors are a mess, and redevelopment was in the process of improving the corridors. And if you'd seen Long Beach Blvd north of Del Amo before, you'd realize how significantly it has improved in the past year. You don't really know that unless you had been here before.
I wasn't really familiar with North Long Beach until I started this either...
It's a real challenge. And you have a lot of kids that get into trouble and do graffiti and graffiti is a voiding(?) influence. And you have businesses that aren't performing as well and don't take care of their properties. It's not an easy situation. And another major thing, redevelopment helped eliminate graffiti. They supported graffiti abatement and they also support code enforcement. Code enforcement is what makes businesses keep their business nice and clean for customers, because some businesses are not really aware or don't care about what their businesses look like so it makes the corridor worse. So code enforcement helps to establish a standard by which businesses should operate just from an appearance point of view.
We're not feeling the full effects of redevelopment going away yet because there is a budget that they're seeing through for the balance of the year. But we are concerned about graffiti abatement going away and code enforcement, which are just basic for trying to keep the area just minimally looking okay.
We talked to a few businesses in North Long Beach, and one of the people said that he was afraid that it was just going to be another copy of Bixby Knolls and there wouldn't be anything unique about it.
No, no, just no. Because north of Del Amo, the business section in that area is actually older than the business area of Bixby Knolls. Most of Bixby Knolls was built in the 50s and 60s in the business area. Most of North Long Beach was built in the 20s 30s and 40s, so the architecture is different.
So it would be different because it would look different?
Yeah, it was at a different time, the architecture is different, people that are in the stores, shop at the stores are different. It's going to be different.
Councilman Neils told us about an effort to improve businesses in NLB and Bixby Knolls is the business model.
What we're doing is a little different than what they're doing a Steve Neils' office. We're doing Uptown Partners, which is a nonprofit for economic and community development. We're going to create and umbrella, which will include the business improvement districts underneath that. A business improvement district is when a group of businesses come together and agree to pay of fee to improve the area. The put in so much per year for the purpose of keeping the streets clean or having events or advertising, that kind of thing. North Long Beach has never been able to get a group of businesses together for the purpose of doing that.
So Neils is trying to create the North Long Beach Business Alliance and his purpose is to pull together a bunch of businesses that are willing to work together for other businesses, and eventually become a business improvement district for the purpose of putting in money and improving the business area. It is very hard to get businesses that are very small to agree to work together because they are barely scraping by, much less want to charge themselves that they may not see valuable.
An employee at a beauty shop we talked to said they were having that sort of problem, that the dollar store next door was selling the same products for cheaper. It seemed like there wasn't that much cooperation or a sense of community among businesses.
Well, it's just that when these big discounters come in they always show up the small businesses. That's the big issue with Walmart and Target because everyone goes to discounts stores and won't go to the small businesses that usually have to charge more just to survive.
Did you want to add anything else?
We figure it's going to take us some time, we're not in a huge rush we want to do this right. Downtown just created an organization like this, so we're trying to model ourselves after them but they're way ahead of us. They're ahead of us because their project area was going to go away so they had to come up with a new organization sooner than we did. Our project area wasn't scheduled to go away for another five years or so. Downtown's project area has been around since the 70s and ours has only been since 96.
And the city helped them. They had consultants help them come up with the language and everything that they needed, and we didn't have any city resources to help us so we're having to figure out everything ourselves. But we're working with Kraig Kojian, the president and chief executive officer of the downtown business associates. They're sharing information with us because everybody want us to be successful, the timing is just such that there aren't any resources to help us. Chamber of Commerce wants to see us succeed too. We just don't have the resources so we're just going to have to figure it out. It's a challenge to say the least.
It's nice to see everyone trying to work together too
Well it's a huge undertaking.
Do you have high hopes?
We're very very optimistic. I think you have to set you sights high. If you set your sights too low you're not going to do as well. You strive for a much better model than what you might be able to attain, but unless you do that you won't be able to even come close. A lot of people want to see us succeed and we have a lot of momentum from redevelopment, from the activity we've been doing since 1996.
Is Uptown Partners the official name? Uptown Partners is not official but what we're using for now. I kind of hold a leadership role but there are several people working on it. I run the meetings because that was what I was doing with the North Long Beach Project Area Committee. There is about 6 or 7 PACs in Long Beach. North was the largest by a huge amount. We were generating the most tax increments (tens of millions of dollars per year). We've been in existence since 1996. We weren't done with what we needed to do, and with redevelopment going away in February this year we need to figure out a way to continue to move forward with the plans that redevelopment started.
Is this all being moved by volunteers right now?
Yes. It's a community effort. We have no money or quite an organization yet. We need to create an organization that will help us continue to move forward and it's not easy.
Are their any specific goals of this organization yet?
We're just getting started. We're brainstorming. We have a few things we're probably going to work on. We need to attract some funding. Some people that will invest their money, time, effort to development in the area. We have to actively pursue grants and funding sources. And we want to help retain and train business owner, so that they are more effective.
Are there particular areas you are focusing on?
The corridors for the most part. Atlantic, Long Beach, Artesia, South Street.
Are their any businesses that are interested?
We are not that far along yet. It's going to take us a year to get formed, to come with goals and an infrastructure. We don't even have an official membership yet. We just created our bylaws last month. We just had a mission and vision statement brainstorming session last week. So we just created a form for membership and sent it out to the 7th, 8th and 9th council district and several individuals that are interested. We've informed people that the membership is available, and we have let people know on the facebook page. It's just going to take some time to pull it together.
Do you have people who are interested in helping fund this organization?
Well, I went to the annual chamber of commerce meeting for long beach and I ran into some individuals who work for banks. Usually they have a certain amount that they donate to the community, so I found somebody that might be interested there. I'm using social media a lot. I've gotten really engaged with linked in. I've joined a lot of economic development, community development, non-profit developers planning, anything that has to do with improvements in the area. And the senior corp of retired executives. They're people who have been in business for decades, now they're retired and want to help people for free basically. So I've plugged into a whole lot of different networks and cultivating connections. The career center in Long Beach. LBCC, dean of the school of business, the head of student services (Ted Robinson). So I'm just cultivating connections right now. It takes a while for it all to come together.
Basically it is making business successful, creating jobs, making the area more economicall viable. And even Bixby Knolls, it has improved immensely but the still have a ways to go.
In what ways do you think they could improve?
Well, they still have vacant properties and people who don't take care of their properties. They still need crowd improvements. Businesses struggle because they are at the mercy of the economy and how often people go shop, and it is difficult for smaller businesses. It is a constant effort to try to attract business, retain business, grow business, and to make people successful. And small businesses struggle. They are the backbone of the economy in many ways, but they struggle too. So we want to be able to support them in their efforts to be successful.
So one of the key things we're trying to do as a community is to work with businesses for our mutual benefit. So we get the services that we want in our community and we get businesses in place to serve the community. So businesses thrive and the community thrives. At least that's how it works theoretically. It's kind of an experiment.
So is the down economy what brought on this project?
No, it was the demise of redevelopment.
When did that start?
Well, the governor had put the elimination of redevelopment and the creation of a new kind of redevelopment of agency... If redevelopment agencies donated $1.7 billion to the state. So the people in redevelopment felt like they were being held hostage, so they took the item to court and the courts ruled in favor of the state and they also said that the state also had no right to take those funds. So what it did, in one bill they eliminated redevelopment and in the second bill that was supposed to recreate redevelopment and allow for us to give money to the state, they took away the option for us to recreate redevelopment. So, effective Feb 1st redevelopment went away. And believe me, that was worth tens of millions of dollars to the city of Long Beach. And that is what made the improvements you see in Bixby Knolls and Long Beach, redevelopment did that. And so we are trying to form this organization to replace the tens of millions of dollars that are no longer going to be coming in.
I actually heard that a lot of other non-profits are really suffering because their budgets were basically cut in half.
Well it's because all the government agencies are reducing their budgets because they are not taking in enough money because the economy is down. We're really not in a great cycle. I mean, we're hearing that it's improving but the improvements are slow. There really isn't a way for this to all resolve. The only way it is going to resolve is if you get good strong businesses and give people jobs, and that is what we're trying to do.
We are covering the differences between Bixby Knolls and the rest of North Long Beach, do you think that there is a sense of separation?
Well the main difference is the demographic. There are some common elements to all communities but there are differences as well. We are a lot more diverse economically and ethnically in North Long Beach. We have a lot more people that are not able to make a lot of money or there are a lot of issues with gangs that they don't have in Bixby Knolls. Because there is a perception of safety, we have a lot of businesses that don't want to come in.
But we have very good neighborhoods. Our corridors are a mess, and redevelopment was in the process of improving the corridors. And if you'd seen Long Beach Blvd north of Del Amo before, you'd realize how significantly it has improved in the past year. You don't really know that unless you had been here before.
I wasn't really familiar with North Long Beach until I started this either...
It's a real challenge. And you have a lot of kids that get into trouble and do graffiti and graffiti is a voiding(?) influence. And you have businesses that aren't performing as well and don't take care of their properties. It's not an easy situation. And another major thing, redevelopment helped eliminate graffiti. They supported graffiti abatement and they also support code enforcement. Code enforcement is what makes businesses keep their business nice and clean for customers, because some businesses are not really aware or don't care about what their businesses look like so it makes the corridor worse. So code enforcement helps to establish a standard by which businesses should operate just from an appearance point of view.
We're not feeling the full effects of redevelopment going away yet because there is a budget that they're seeing through for the balance of the year. But we are concerned about graffiti abatement going away and code enforcement, which are just basic for trying to keep the area just minimally looking okay.
We talked to a few businesses in North Long Beach, and one of the people said that he was afraid that it was just going to be another copy of Bixby Knolls and there wouldn't be anything unique about it.
No, no, just no. Because north of Del Amo, the business section in that area is actually older than the business area of Bixby Knolls. Most of Bixby Knolls was built in the 50s and 60s in the business area. Most of North Long Beach was built in the 20s 30s and 40s, so the architecture is different.
So it would be different because it would look different?
Yeah, it was at a different time, the architecture is different, people that are in the stores, shop at the stores are different. It's going to be different.
Councilman Neils told us about an effort to improve businesses in NLB and Bixby Knolls is the business model.
What we're doing is a little different than what they're doing a Steve Neils' office. We're doing Uptown Partners, which is a nonprofit for economic and community development. We're going to create and umbrella, which will include the business improvement districts underneath that. A business improvement district is when a group of businesses come together and agree to pay of fee to improve the area. The put in so much per year for the purpose of keeping the streets clean or having events or advertising, that kind of thing. North Long Beach has never been able to get a group of businesses together for the purpose of doing that.
So Neils is trying to create the North Long Beach Business Alliance and his purpose is to pull together a bunch of businesses that are willing to work together for other businesses, and eventually become a business improvement district for the purpose of putting in money and improving the business area. It is very hard to get businesses that are very small to agree to work together because they are barely scraping by, much less want to charge themselves that they may not see valuable.
An employee at a beauty shop we talked to said they were having that sort of problem, that the dollar store next door was selling the same products for cheaper. It seemed like there wasn't that much cooperation or a sense of community among businesses.
Well, it's just that when these big discounters come in they always show up the small businesses. That's the big issue with Walmart and Target because everyone goes to discounts stores and won't go to the small businesses that usually have to charge more just to survive.
Did you want to add anything else?
We figure it's going to take us some time, we're not in a huge rush we want to do this right. Downtown just created an organization like this, so we're trying to model ourselves after them but they're way ahead of us. They're ahead of us because their project area was going to go away so they had to come up with a new organization sooner than we did. Our project area wasn't scheduled to go away for another five years or so. Downtown's project area has been around since the 70s and ours has only been since 96.
And the city helped them. They had consultants help them come up with the language and everything that they needed, and we didn't have any city resources to help us so we're having to figure out everything ourselves. But we're working with Kraig Kojian, the president and chief executive officer of the downtown business associates. They're sharing information with us because everybody want us to be successful, the timing is just such that there aren't any resources to help us. Chamber of Commerce wants to see us succeed too. We just don't have the resources so we're just going to have to figure it out. It's a challenge to say the least.
It's nice to see everyone trying to work together too
Well it's a huge undertaking.
Do you have high hopes?
We're very very optimistic. I think you have to set you sights high. If you set your sights too low you're not going to do as well. You strive for a much better model than what you might be able to attain, but unless you do that you won't be able to even come close. A lot of people want to see us succeed and we have a lot of momentum from redevelopment, from the activity we've been doing since 1996.