Firms, Officials Give Mixed Grades to C Street Closure

Jim Swift, president of Gelare Ice Cream, could not have been more pleased last year when the City of San Diego decided to close C Street to automobile traffic between 2nd and 6th avenues. After all, ice cream, in business jargon, is an “impulse item,” highly dependent on foot traffic, and it stood to reason that the creation of a pedestrian-transit mall on C would greatly increase the number of people passing by his new store in the 400 block.

But Swift’s dreams melted faster than a double-dip cone in the heat of a Santa Ana, and the Gelare store has closed for lack of business.

Adding to that empty feeling, The Big Cheese, a downtown delicatessen on that block for more than a decade, closed its doors last week, and the store that once housed the venerable See’s candy shop has remained vacant since the confectioner moved to Horton Plaza in the summer.

C Street, home of the San Diego Trolley, is having an awkward adolescence, with ugly pockmarks caused by construction of trolley stops and the renovation of the U.S. Grant Hotel, a 4-year-old construction project. But some merchants, along with city and transit officials, remain optimistic about its future. Some predict it will be the next area to benefit, as did Horton Plaza and the Gaslamp Quarter, from downtown San Diego’s renaissance.

Later this month, the City Council will decide whether C Street should be closed permanently to motorized traffic between 2nd and 6th avenues. Engineers analyzing the effect of the experimental closure on downtown’s traffic flow are compiling reports to present to the council that will weigh at least as heavily on the decision as the opinions of the merchants.

Tom Larwin, director of the Metropolitan Transit Development Board, is lobbying for the permanent closure, saying it would enhance the efficiency of the San Diego Trolley, particularly after it begins stopping on both sides of the street when the Euclid Line begins operating in the spring.

“If trolleys don’t have to run next to cars, they’re going to run on time,” Larwin said. “And we think the closure presents some exciting new concepts for downtown as well.”

Larwin said a permanent commitment to the pedestrian-transit mall concept would enable the city and transit district to spruce up C Street and transform it to resemble stylish walkways like those found in Denver, Minneapolis and many European cities. But that vision of the future offers little solace to Swift, whose Gelare franchise could not survive the upheaval of the transition period.

“There is no doubt that the closing of the street for the trolley cars and the construction of the Grant Hotel reduced tremendously the amount of foot traffic on C Street,” Swift said. “Clearly, there may have been additional reasons for our store’s failure. For one thing, there is no doubt that the opening of Horton Plaza has had a devastating effect on stores in the immediate area. Unfortunately for us, ‘wait and see about the future of C Street’ turned out to be ‘get out of business.’ ”

Gerald Trimble, executive vice president of the Centre City Development Corp., was an early opponent of the C Street closure. “What’s happening on C Street now is extremely negative as far as creating a walking street, and we really ought to be focusing on that,” he said. “It’s a complicated issue, and what we have now seems to be caught in the middle of answering what everybody wants, and that’s unfortunate, because nobody’s needs are being met on C Street now. I imagine that’s had a negative impact on C Street business.”

Some merchants say they have experienced problems receiving deliveries since the street was closed and have not reaped any benefits in return. Unlike Swift, however, they are prepared to wait out the transition period in hopes that their fortunes will improve after a final decision is reached on the future of C Street.

“Most of our business is walk-in, and I’m sure that we will be attracting more people once all of this construction is completed,” said Victor Grinius, owner of the Fish House restaurant, upstairs on the corner of 3rd Avenue and C. Grinius has experienced mixed success with the Fish House--his informal downstairs fast-food restaurant was closed recently and will be converted to a New Orleans-style eatery, but the more formal establishment upstairs remains open.

“I’m sure the construction on C had an influence on our problems downstairs,” Grinius said. “But I have confidence in the future of downtown. Cars and trolleys don’t mix too well, and this could be one heck of a nice street if it’s closed to traffic and they put in flowers and trees--give it a real aesthetic appeal.”

Gene Schwartz, a commercial real estate broker leasing space in Four C Square, a new conglomeration of restaurants in its second week of operations on C Street, is guardedly optimistic about the street’s future. Schwartz is among those pushing for a “full-out” commitment to the pedestrian-transit mall concept.

“There are growing pains on C Street--we all expected that,” Schwartz said. “But there are real perceptual pains as well--the city has to get a much stronger hand on what it wants to accomplish there.

“What they’ve done so far--closing the street to traffic for the trolley and just putting up some concrete planters at the intersections--is very nondescript, and it has not encouraged any foot traffic on C. But we’ve always felt the closure idea was excellent. Now all they have to do is get some landscaping in there, so it reflects a true commitment to the mall concept.

“With the upgrading of the shops already under way, and the completion of the Grant not far off (the hotel is scheduled to reopen next month) this is the next area of really great potential downtown. But it will take the proper commitment of everyone involved to make it happen.”

Later this month, when the City Council begins deliberations on the future of C Street, there likely will be some powerful forces urging that auto traffic return to the street, and the pedestrian-transit mall concept be scrapped.

“I don’t think my opinion on this has changed one bit,” said Councilman Ed Struiksma, who opposed closing C Street on even an experimental basis. “In the long run, we’re going to live to regret this. We need all the streets we can to carry our vehicular traffic, and during this renovation period, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that merchants are losing business.

“Transit malls are places where people should want to congregate, and I don’t see that happening for at least six months on C Street, if it ever happens at all. In fact, right now it’s downright frightening to be on that street, because you sure don’t want to get in the way of that trolley.

“Some day this could be an inviting pedestrian mall, but you have to weigh that in regard to the future of downtown traffic circulation. I’m not sure the trade-off is worth it.”

Trimble said businesses might benefit more from vehicular traffic than they would from more pedestrians. “Merchants really like to see cars driving by their businesses,” he said. “It helps them build their identities. Plus, there are the parking and traffic problems to consider. I don’t know that I’ve changed my opinion a bit--I’m still opposed to it.”

Roy Potter, executive vice president of the merchants group San Diegans Inc., which also opposed the closure of C Street, said, “The move was extremely ill-timed. Looking at Broadway, there’s wall-to-wall traffic, and the parking garages are more difficult to access. That’s not good for downtown business.”

Members of San Diegans Inc. are participating in a survey on the effect of the closure, and the results will be tabulated for Potter to carry to the council before its vote on whether the move should be permanent. “Part of the problem is that there are so many competing uses on the street, and in the immediate area, right now,” Potter said.

“With the concentration of businesses in Horton Plaza and in the Gaslamp, it’s hard to see much new activity on C Street in the foreseeable future. The completion of the Grant will help put more people back on C Street, and then we’ll at least be back to the point where we were before that construction began.”

Larwin, of course, will be among those vigorously lobbying to close C Street permanently. “As far as we can tell, the closure has not had an adverse impact on downtown traffic,” the transit director said, “and I don’t think it really has hurt business on C Street.

“Right now, it’s not a pedestrian-transit mall in the true sense--the sidewalks have not been widened, and there are other things that can be done to make this a much more pleasant place to walk, once the city makes its decision. But the potential is there.”