State Street Revisited

We all want a thriving, vibrant State Street, but we don’t have one.

I first wrote about the decline of State Street in 2017. As I look back to those articles not much has changed. 

State Street isn’t actually dead, but it has been dying for years. I know that some folks deny this, but it’s a fact. According to Hayes Commercial Group, the vacancy rate on State Street is about 13.7%. In pre-Covid 2019, State Street’s vacancy rate was 12.4%, so things haven’t gotten much better. As Hayes recently reported, “The [400 to 1300 block] corridor continues to struggle both to attract and retain long-term tenants in sufficient numbers to break the cycle.” 

Why has it declined? And what will get us back to State as the thriving centerpiece of town? The reasons for the decline I described in 2017 still exist with the added problem of closing State Street to traffic. The solutions I offered then are about the same today.

A major part of the problem is that the City has relied on focus groups, advisory committees, and consultants to come up with solutions. The City Council formed the State Street Advisory Committee to come up with a State Street Master Plan. They have funded three consultants over the years to come up with solutions. In 2022 they hired consulting group MIG for $780,000 to tell them what to do. In my opinion these consultants were and are a waste of money. It’s no secret what the problems are and committees and out-of-town consultants have yet to solve things. 

Here is how to bring State Street back to the vibrant shopping and dining street it used to be.

1. The homeless on State are a major concern for many locals. Unfortunately, solutions are very difficult. The Ninth Circuit has limited cities’ ability to deal with the problem. The City is trying to deal with the problem, but with limited resources it’s too big for it to solve alone. The solution requires a lot of money, and maybe we citizens need to step up and help fund groups that work with the homeless. And the City needs to step up enforcement of our legal ordinances regarding sleeping, begging, and anti-social behavior on the Street.

2. The closing of State to traffic from Haley to Sola was a blow to retailers. The City’s response to the pandemic allowed restaurants to open outdoor dining “parklets.” But the closing of State to create a promenade hit retailers hard. The City has recently imposed regulations on parklets that may well eliminate many of them, but the pandemic era closing of State remains. Now that the pandemic has ended, the City needs to re-open the street to traffic.

Part of retail marketing is the visibility of one’s store. This is an issue I am very familiar with as an owner of retail properties. The problem with the Promenade is that it is 1.2 miles up and 1.2 miles down and not all shoppers will walk that far. That is why visibility from traffic is an important factor for a store’s location.

A solution would be a one-way traffic lane from Haley to Sola. This would return State to a normal street and stores along its entire length would be visible to shoppers and sales would improve. Presently the street is chaotic and unsafe. By encouraging folks to walk on the street with cyclists and skateboarders whizzing by is dangerous to pedestrians. By allowing a lane of traffic the chaos on the Street would be solved.

3. The City still has a problem with its Community Development Department’s permitting process. It is no secret that the process is cumbersome, time consuming, and difficult to get plans approved. Its reputation discourages businesses from locating here. The City claims that they have improved the process, but those applicants whom I talk to say it is still very difficult. I know that the City has problems staffing its departments, but it is the entrenched committees that one has to go through that are a major part of the problem. The City needs to do a top-to-bottom analysis and reorganization of the permit process. They have funded a position for a planning ombudsman to help applicants through the planning process which will help. But I don’t see the City Council having the will to bring real change.

The City Council – Mayor Randy Rowse and Council Member Eric Friedman excepted – has been acting without understanding the full unintended consequences of their decisions. While the pandemic gave rise to a temporary solution to help restaurants, the closing of State Street had nothing to do with the pandemic. It was more of an excuse to push through an agenda that a majority of the Council had for a street mall. The result is stagnant community life on State Street except for party central for Gen Y and Z in the 500 block.

Instead of passing the buck to consultants, committees, and relying on community bull sessions, the Council should defer to the financial decisions made by businesses, property owners, and shoppers who do business on the Street. These are the “stakeholders” the City needs to listen to. More top-down political planning will just perpetuate the problem and things will remain the same.