Sierra Madre : Town Goes Shopping for Revenue

Jerry Meyer says he likes owning a Hallmark store in Sierra Madre because he knows his customers by name, can take checks without asking for identification and can let merchandise go out the door with people who say they will come back later and pay, and actually do.

This is shop-keeping in small-town America. His store, the Paper Palace, and the whole town of Sierra Madre, Meyer said, look and feel as if they had been picked up from the Midwest and plopped down in Southern California.

Sierra Madre is the kind of place, he said, where people stroll the streets at night licking ice cream cones, where volunteers man the fire truck and the ambulance, and where the heart of the business district has stop signs instead of traffic signals.

“We have a traffic jam in the afternoon that lasts about three minutes,” Meyer said.

There are no supermarkets, just two grocery stores. People buy tools in a little hardware store, not a giant home improvement center. The coin laundry is named Coin Laundry and the restaurant is called The Only Place in Town.

There are a couple of sandwich shops, but no McDonald’s, no Burger King, no Wendy’s. If you insist on fast food from a chain outlet, you have a choice of the regular or extra crispy entrees at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

But although visitors may find it quaint, the business area of Sierra Madre is not growing, city officials say, and it is not providing the tax revenue the city needs. As a result, city officials have begun to explore how the city might create more revenue through redevelopment.

Mayor Andrew Roy Buchan said the city must be cautious. “What we really have in mind,” he said, “is upgrading the retail area in a way that isn’t going to disfigure the city.”

Sierra Madre, with 10,800 residents, takes in less than two square miles. It is bordered by the mountains on the north, Pasadena on the west and Arcadia on the east and south.

The residential area is a mix of condominiums, apartments and houses, a few dating to the last century.

The business section consists of several blocks along Sierra Madre Boulevard and two along Baldwin Avenue.

Joan Reichardt, a design consultant who surveyed the business area in an effort to get a grant for Sierra Madre under a program that helps cities preserve and invigorate downtown areas, said retail stores have been disappearing over the last five years.

Reichardt, who has lived in Sierra Madre nearly all of her 41 years, said it was once “a self-sufficient community” with a hotel, car dealership, dress shops, appliance stores and other retail businesses. Now the storefronts are being taken over by engineers, real estate agents and service businesses such as beauty shops.

City Administrator James McRea said: “If you go back 15 years, you could buy an automobile from a Ford agency, you could buy clothes; maybe you couldn’t buy a pillow case, but you could pretty much survive by shopping locally.”

Today, McRea said, “if you want to come to Sierra Madre to have lunch and get your hair done, there’s no problem. If you want to have lunch and buy a dress, you’ve got a problem.”

McRea said there hasn’t been a new commercial building constructed in Sierra Madre in five years, and sales tax revenue has remained flat, while neighboring cities have picked up business. He said Sierra Madre receives about $17 per person in sales tax a year, while the average for other cities in California is close to $100.

As Councilman Clem L. Bartolai said: “The moment of truth is approaching.”

The council last week invited City Atty. Charles Martin and a redevelopment consultant, Fred Lyte, to suggest how the city might use its redevelopment authority to generate additional revenue.

Martin is also city attorney and city manager in Irwindale, which is trying to get the Los Angeles Raiders pro football team to move there. Irwindale’s redevelopment agency, with the help of Lyte, has put $28 million in the bank with tax revenue from several major projects.

Martin pointed out that there are only a few ways a city can raise its income. One is through population growth, but Sierra Madre’s population hasn’t increased in 20 years.

The city can ask voters to raise taxes, Martin said, but that often leads to a recall of council members.

The other alternative is to encourage development that will produce sales and property tax revenues.

Sierra Madre’s downtown is in a redevelopment project area, which means that property taxes paid on new construction are channeled to the redevelopment agency. McRea said the agency received nearly $400,000 in tax revenue last year.

Martin said the city could undertake commercial and industrial development or a recreational or institutional project.

Lyte said Sierra Madre will not succeed in redevelopment unless its agency has the power to acquire property through condemnation. But that would require a change in Sierra Madre’s redevelopment plan, which does not contain condemnation authority.

Mayor Buchan said he would oppose changing the condemnation provision.