New kid on the block
Questions and answers with the Downtown Ventura Organization’s new leader
By Saundra Sorenson 07/19/2007
The Downtown Ventura Organization, a group committed to the revitalization and economic development of Ventura’s historical downtown (informed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street Approach) welcomed its first executive director at the beginning of July. Rob Edwards comes to Ventura by way of Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Daytona Beach, Phoenix and Downtown Los Angeles, sporting an educational background in urban studies, city planning and landscape architecture and 15 years of professional experience.
Tell me about your position at the DVO.
You need to be a jack of all trades. You need to know a little bit about fundraising, a little bit about city planning, a little bit about urban design, economic development, marketing, promotions, and you also have to be able to run an organization, so you have to have a financial background as well, and so I think that’s important to mention, because in the different places that I’ve worked and lived, all the jobs have been slightly different, but when added together they make the perfect combination for this position in Ventura today.
What brought the DVO to the point where it needed an executive director?
At some point in the last year, senior city staff decided to carve out some funding in the Economic Development Department to create a Main Street Program. The Main Street Program is a business model for economic revitalization of historical commercial districts. It’s out of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and it’s about a 30-year-old business model that’s almost perfected but still evolving. My first Main Street Organization that I ran was in [Washington] D.C., in a very transitional, up-and-coming-neighborhood, and then downtown Daytona Beach.
It’s a long time coming for Ventura to have one of these organizations, because so many other historic downtowns have had them in place for years. Encinitas, Pasa Robles — there are probably 25 just in California.
What does instituting this kind of program involve?
Communication to all the property owners and the business owners that we exist, we have money, we have a director now, and their interest in seeing change, or no change, is all [up to] their participation. Up to this point, [membership] has been 15 people essentially — half of which are either property owners or merchants, but the number needs to be tripled at least. So my goal over the next month is to go and meet every single merchant, and over time meet the property owners and tell them what this whole business model is about so they can be involved and make the decision to participate, or donate in some other way. The board is a working board. There are four committees — design, promotions, organization and economic development.
There’s no official boundaries or walls within which you have to work. But, with that said, it’s revitalization of a neighborhood. Like with transportation, it could be new signage guidelines. There’s a whole milieu of making a healthy business district.
Do you sense a local resistance to becoming too much like State Street?
Yes.
The DVO board should be a communication engine to the property owners that if you need to get “x” return on your investment, and you need get this sort of rent, and you think you can only get it by putting in a Starbucks or a bank, then please come see us because we interface with entrepreneurs, and half of our board are already entrepreneurs, or have friends who are entrepreneurs, and I will find you a replacement that’s not a national chain. If you go the easy route and try to court the national chains that have AAA credit and deep pockets, we don’t want you to think that way. We want you to know that we’re here.
How does the general plan affect what you’re trying to do in your position?
The city manager has indicated that I’ll be a part of the implementation of the downtown plan. It seems like panhandling and parking, not unlike every other little downtown America, are the two issues. Downtown, parking is at a premium. Vagrancy is very difficult to control in the public realm. That’s the hot button, those two things.
I don’t know who said it, but someone famous said that no downtown worth its salt doesn’t have a parking problem.
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