Downtown Firms Plan Improvement District : Ventura: Merchants say a self-imposed tax would pay for promotion and street beautification that the city cannot afford.

Downtown Ventura merchants, suffering from slow sales and vacant stores on Main Street, are planning to tax themselves to pay for advertising, promotion and street beautification that the city cannot afford.

A group of merchants is working to establish a business improvement district, which would levy an average annual fee of $275 on each business.

The district would spend the money to promote and improve Ventura’s struggling downtown businesses, said Chuck Smith, co-chairman of the group.

“We’re a unique city in a unique setting. Why aren’t we prospering?” said Smith, who runs the K B Roberts gift shop. “We aren’t prospering because we don’t have the mechanism to compete with businesses that are prospering. . . . We’re ravaged by the economy and the competition in Santa Barbara and the malls that have moved in.”

The proposed district must have approval of 51% of the 427 businesses inside its boundaries, said group member Ed Elrod, co-owner of the Ventura Bookstore. The district would be bounded by Ash and Olive streets on the east and west and by Poli Street and the Pacific Ocean on the north and south, he said.

Businesses with at least 10 employees would pay $500 a year, while services such as dry cleaners, beauticians, and auto repair shops would pay $250 a year, Elrod said. Businesses such as banks, lawyers and doctors would pay $150 a year, he said. And motels would pay fees ranging from $333 to $999 a year, based on the number of rooms.

“The main idea of a business improvement district is to attract business to the downtown area,” Elrod said. He said the trend toward improvement districts “has been kind of a reaction to strip malls. We really fight those for every retail dollar.”

Elrod said the money would be used to buy advertisements and brochures that tout the downtown area to shoppers and to out-of-town businesses that might be interested in moving to Ventura.

Some large buildings downtown have been vacant for several months. The County Stationery building at the corner of Chestnut and Main streets has not had tenants for 2 1/2 years, Elrod said.

The money could also be spent on holiday decorations and on security guards for periods when crime is higher than usual, such as Christmas and during the Ventura County Fair, he said.

Burglaries seem to rise during the fair, said Sandy Smith, president of the Downtown Ventura Assn. Since this year’s fair started last Wednesday, five or six Main Street businesses have been burglarized, Smith said.

David Valeska, project manager for the city of Ventura, said the business improvement district will give support to the downtown merchants that the city cannot provide.

“I send letters out to businesses every day. I’m going to a trade show in Orange County next month with brochures. It’s the city’s action to bring businesses downtown,” Valeska said.

But a business improvement district would expand that effort by helping businesses that are already here, he said. The districts usually lead to increased sales “because the businesses are better organized,” Valeska said.

Business improvement districts are in 120 California cities, including Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, he said.

The district requires City Council approval, and the city would collect fees from businesses for the district, he said. But only the district’s executive committee would have the authority to spend the money, he said.

Valeska said he has heard objections from a few merchants, but not as many as six years ago, when a similar attempt to set up a business improvement district failed because of merchant protests.

“But now those who opposed it are supporting it,” he said. “Downtown’s suffering from the recession, and the people downtown are finding where their interest lies. Last time we tried this, the economy wasn’t in such bad shape.”

A public information session on the district is scheduled for 6 p.m. Aug. 29 at the Holiday Inn.