By
now, headlines screaming about Rochester’s struggling downtown or the region’s
failure to retain young people have gotten a little old. Sometimes you’ve got
to experience the news firsthand for it to have an impact. And for City
Councilmember Bill Pritchard, that moment came the night before Thanksgiving.
“That
night used to be one of the biggest nights of the year — probably in all the
bars, but particularly in the gay community,” Pritchard says. “Gay bars were
packed before Thanksgiving. Our friends and my partner went out to three or
four different gay bars in town that night. And all of them were dead. In one
or two of them, they were literally the only people in the bar. I was shocked.
My partner was shocked. Our friends were shocked.”
And
to Pritchard, the slow night was just one symptom of Rochester’s continuing
struggle with its downtown. “That’s the effect of losing so many people in
their 20s and 30s,” he says. “And that just has ramifications, a ripple effect
that you don’t appreciate until you see it for yourself.”
“Five
years ago, the bars would have been hopping,” says Pritchard. “When I count the
number of close friends who have moved out of the area… it is a very serious
problem. The reality is that we need to do everything we can to make young
people’s stay here a pleasant one, so if they do move out of the area, when
they’re thinking of beginning to raise a family, they come back. That’s how you
expand your tax base. It isn’t by continuing the turnover of apartments in
buildings that already exist. It’s keeping properties on the tax rolls, and
it’s having the bodies to patronize the stores and other businesses we have in
the area.”
Pritchard
wants to do something about all that. And now he’s going to get his chance. At
the beginning of December, he was chosen to chair a new Center City Task Force,
which includes Councilmembers Wade Norwood and Adam McFadden.
While
the idea of forming a task force to address one of Rochester’s pressing
concerns is nothing new — no doubt the term “task force” has become a laugher
in certain circles — the Center City Task Force has a couple of unique
qualities.
“I
don’t want anybody to come away with the impression that this is just one more
task force, one more government group,” Pritchard says. “We are not reinventing
the wheel. This is not about just listening and talking and discussing. This is
about doing.”
And
when it comes to doing, the task force has its votes on City Council as a way
of influencing the downtown scene. After meeting with private developers, for
example, Pritchard, Norwood, and McFadden will be able to propose new city
legislation — and push downtown’s new and highly flexible zoning code — to
make Center City more enticing to those developers. The task force also has a
relatively short lifespan: 13 months.
“The
bulk of the success coming out of the next 13 months is going to be coming out
of the private sector and through the people we work with collaboratively,”
Pritchard says. “We might make one change in city government that enhances the
private sector’s ability to do business.”
Of course,
it’s not that simple. The CCTF will be attempting to make legislative strides
while sections of downtown sit in a deep state of flux thanks to the evolving
Renaissance Square project and other mammoth uncertainties like largely vacant
Sibley Building and Midtown Plaza.
When
it comes to a project like Renaissance Square, which has the potential to
drastically alter the downtown landscape, the CCTF can play “a lead role” in
pushing the opportunity for spin-off development. “Whether Renaissance Square
is built or not, the areas around that block are still going to be there,”
Pritchard says. “You have some really good real estate there. But we can’t hold
off discussion of the areas around Renaissance Square until we know that
project’s going to go forward, be funded, and ultimately be built.”
And
the task force has a clear opportunity to weigh in on the future of the Sibley
Building and Midtown, he says, by “using our bully pulpit, our ability to bring
pressure to bear through the legislative process. I’m hopeful we’ll be able to
address Sibley. Midtown is a bigger animal with more complex issues. We have an
owner there who wants to continue operating Midtown. I think [Wilmorite
Chairman] Tom Wilmot, if he had a chance, he’d dump Sibley in a heartbeat.”
(Wilmorite subsidiary Rochwil owns the Sibley Building and owes the city
millions of dollars in back taxes, delinquent loans, and late fees on the
property.)
Then
there’s retail, which has not had a major presence downtown since the decline
of Midtown and Sibley’s. The task force can play a role in attracting retail
back to downtown, Pritchard says, but it’s not about to go courting the chains
or breaking the city’s bank with incentives.
“I
think the time has come where there’s enough interest in downtown that we don’t
have to open up the cookie jar,” he says. “And I think we’re making a mistake
when we look at the kinds of retail stores you’d find at the malls. We are
never going to be able to compete with the suburban shopping malls on certain
points, like parking. It’s just a fact of life. So let’s not bring something in
to downtown that already exists in the suburbs. Let’s encourage unique, locally
owned shops. And maybe we’ll push for a reduced-sales-tax or sales-tax-free
zone for downtown for a defined period of time. But if we think we’re going to
encourage people to come to Kaufmann’s in Midtown as opposed to Marketplace or
Eastview, forget it.”
But
the first item on the task force’s agenda is another long-time downtown
frustration: parking. Metered parking downtown is limited, to say the least.
And most parking options are in paid parking garages. The city commissioned a
study on downtown parking two months ago. Pritchard expects to see the results
early next year, and improving the parking situation downtown, he says, “will
probably be one of the first legislative actions you’ll see coming out of
Council.”
Specifically,
the task force will consider adding more of the free 30-minute parking spots
sprinkled throughout downtown, as well as special arrangements with business
owners for the occasional use of the spaces in front of their shops.
“A
couple of months back there was a business owner on Liberty Pole Way who was
doing some work on his business,” Pritchard says. “Guys were parking in front
of his building because construction trucks needed to unload. And he got a
ticket. He said, ‘It’s not that I can’t afford to pay the ticket. But I’m
making hundreds of thousands of dollars in improvements to my property. I’m
investing in the city. And now I’ve got to deal with this.'”
The limited
lifespan of the task force is deliberate. Pritchard wants to see accomplishments, and he
wants the task force to be judged by its actions specifically.
“Our
goal is not to hold a whole bunch of meetings,” he says. “It is to grab hold of
the plans that already exist, the ideas that have already been expressed, and
begin to implement them, break them down into short, medium, and long-term
objectives. We have 13 months. I want accomplishments in those 13 months.”
This article appears in Dec 22-28, 2004.
