Ventura May Look to Arts to Revitalize Downtown

The City Council is expected to debate a plan tonight establishing a downtown cultural district, a move designed to boost the city’s economy as well as its image.

If approved, the city will join more than 90 areas nationwide--including Santa Barbara, Hollywood and Eureka--in using the arts as a tool for economic revival.

The proposed district would stretch from Ash to Figueroa streets along Main and Santa Clara. Under the plan submitted by the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission, four venues will anchor the district: the Ventura Theatre, City Hall’s third-floor gallery, a 750-seat auditorium to be built at the mission and an enlarged gallery at the Ventura County Museum of History and Art. Other facilities in the zone include the Livery Theatre, the Century 10 movie theater and E.P. Foster Library.

Mayor Jim Friedman declined to predict whether the plan will be approved, saying the sticking point might be the district’s price tag.

Tonight’s council meeting caps a six-year civic discussion over a cultural zone to attract visitors and businesses. Still ahead is the hard work of deciding just what kind of cultural district the city should have.

A 1998 report by Americans for the Arts defines a cultural district as “a well-recognized, labeled, mixed-use area of a city in which a high concentration of cultural facilities serves as the anchor of attraction.”

But apart from that definition, planners say there is no single model for a successful cultural district.

“The concepts will transfer, but the character of the cultural district will be completely different and has to be reflective of our personality as a community,” said Karyl Lynn Burns, who has helped plan Ventura’s district and worked on Santa Barbara’s State Street project.

“It’s very hard to model this sort of community effort,” said Sonia Tower, Ventura’s cultural affairs director. “It’s a physical area, and you can’t really replicate the unique attributes of an area.”

In creating or refurbishing arts facilities, the city aims to use as few public funds as possible. It will act only as a minority partner on capital projects or provide one-time seed funding. Private investment, planners hope, will do the rest.

But, according to former Santa Barbara Mayor Hal Conklin, for a cultural district to succeed there must be a commitment to more than new facilities.

“Buildings and infrastructure don’t make it happen,” he said. “The things they should be investing in are performance groups and the entities that will provide life to the district.”

Grants, free advertising in city tourism brochures and management assistance are several ways to nurture arts groups, he said.

Santa Barbara is most often cited as a model for Ventura, because of its similar size and geography and a healthy downtown business center that Ventura would like to replicate.

But Conklin, who is still involved in Santa Barbara’s State Street district, said Ventura can escape the cultural shadow cast by its northern neighbor.

“I think Ventura should pick and choose carefully the one or two things it can grow and make those things happen,” he said, citing the highly successful Chamber Music Festival as a possible centerpiece for Ventura’s cultural offerings.

Conklin, who has an office in Ventura, said he thinks the time is right for the city to establish a cultural district but that it must be patient. It has taken Santa Barbara more than 15 years to achieve its current status, he said.

“None of this happens overnight,” Conklin said. “If you say you want a cultural district and you start now in earnest, 25 years later you’ll have a cultural district.”

Eureka is five years into using culture to distinguish itself in Northern California. With the most artists per capita of any U.S. city, Eureka has used the arts to rejuvenate a 49-block downtown area, parts of which were once havens for drug dealers, prostitutes and vandals.

“By using the arts, we’ve been able to tie the district in much better,” said Charlotte McDonald, executive director of Eureka Main Street. “It’s been the one unifying theme.”

Just as Eureka has decided to showcase its local studio artists, McDonald suggested that Ventura establish a niche and not try to be a cultural catchall.

Eureka Main Street is funded by a $150,000 annual budget and has many volunteers. McDonald said the area has seen a $33 return on every public dollar spent. But despite its rejuvenation, Eureka, with about 48,000 people living in the area, has not attracted much outside investment. Primarily, smaller entrepreneurs have moved downtown, McDonald said.

“We still don’t have the volume that places like Starbucks are looking for,” she said.

Ventura would prefer to jump-start its downtown through private investment rather than spending its own money. To spend as few public dollars as possible, McDonald advised the city to keep the cultural district planning process open and to involve more people who might be able to contribute.

“They need to identify who the stakeholders are, and then they need to bring in those people and identify the partnerships,” she said.

She added that current downtown property owners are especially important.

“If you get your property owners and they see what the value is, they get excited about it as well.”

Grant programs from corporations and foundations can be especially helpful too, she said.

Hollywood faced a different situation. It was already internationally known as the world’s entertainment capital, but visitors found a dirty, unsafe, depressed area surrounding familiar landmarks such as Mann’s Chinese Theater.

Now, with funding from 40 property owners, a six-block area of Hollywood Boulevard is being cleaned up and boosters are trying to market it as a destination, said Kerry Morrison, executive director of the Hollywood Entertainment District. The area now has clear boundaries and pedestrian-friendly amenities such as signs and maps.

“We don’t control the boulevard,” Morrison said, “but we can seek to gain cooperation and consensus around activities and issues that will make this area cohesive to people who come.”

Morrison warned that whatever Ventura does, it should not jump the gun in marketing its new downtown.

“Once you have critical mass of a couple of things to offer, then you can start to tell the world there is a reason to come here. But I think you’ve got to build that first,” she said.

“The word of mouth will kill you if people say, ‘Oh, well, we went there and it’s no different.’ ”