CJ??ˆDablo
Staff Writer
Pacific Avenue in Long Beach’s Wrigley neighborhood has seen a few
recent efforts to revitalize the business district and neighborhoods,
according to a few community leaders from the Wrigley Association and
South Wrigley Neighborhood Advisory Group.
Their list: vintage-styled lampposts now line a stretch of Pacific;
brightly colored banners will soon be hung to permanently decorate the
street; and a community garden now grows where there used to be a
building that had been destroyed after the Los Angeles riots.
But community leaders and residents at a meeting last week are hoping to
ignite excitement in Wrigley. They’ve imagined that a stretch of
Pacific Avenue, just north of Pacific Coast Highway up to Hill Street,
can be transformed into more than the string of commercial buildings
that line the street right now. Community leaders are also hoping that
business leaders from Pacific Avenue will join their efforts.
“We want it to look like a place that people are going to want to come
to, stop and shop and stay,” said Sam Portillo, a Wrigley resident who
also serves on the Wrigley Association’s board of directors.
Portillo was among the group of 20-plus people who gathered Aug. 4 at
the Wrigley Community Police Center to hear how business leaders from
Bixby Knolls revitalized their own business district nearly two decades
ago. Blair Cohn, who serves as the executive director of the Bixby
Knolls Business Improvement Association (BKBIA), shared at the Wrigley
Village’s Thursday night’s meeting how Bixby Knolls started to improve
their neighborhood.
“We’re not the Promised Land yet,” Cohn said, as he described how Bixby
Knolls is still trying to attract both professional and retail
businesses to Bixby Knolls.
“But,” he added, “we try every trick we can think of to activate it, to
get on the radar, to…make it attractive to new business.”
Cohn said in last week’s meeting that their association began with their efforts to physically clean up their streets.
“One of the key things that I learned was don’t wait and don’t expect
the city to do everything for you.It won’t happen. If you wait, you’re
going to spend a lot of time waiting. It’s very important as business
owners and residents, you have to take ownership of your area yourself,”
Cohn said, detailing how the association hired contractors to pull
weeds, cut trees, and pick up trash. Others would look after graffiti
and clean up what taggers left behind.
Cohn described how the efforts to create a neighborhood community in
Bixby Knolls directly tied to increasing business for the local
establishments. He recounted the clubs that were formed to create social
networks among the Bixby Knolls residents and business leaders. They
gathered in the local establishments to dine together. They heard an
author speak at a literary society meeting. They organized walking tours
where residents would drop in at the local coffee shop and other
businesses along the way. Soon, First Fridays formed where locals could
hear music or view art at the events hosted by the businesses along
Atlantic Avenue.
At the Aug. 4 meeting, Cohn didn’t formulate a plan for Wrigley
residents to copy Bixby Knolls’ activism. He wasn’t there to tell
Wrigley residents what to do, he said, but he did have a few ideas to
help Wrigley residents imagine what their neighborhood could be like.
“It would be unthinkable to try to make Pacific Avenue like a
cookie-cutter Irvine shopping district, because there’s so much
character in these buildings, so much character on the street and so
much history,” Cohn said.
A few attendees at the meeting pointed out an art deco building on the
street and key landmarks on Pacific, and others emphasized concerns over
crime and safety. Some lamented how things used to be in the
neighborhood.
Gita Patel, who, with her husband, has owned Allied Rexall Drugs on
Pacific Avenue for the last 30 years, remembered what her neighborhood
used to be like. It used to be a safe area, she said, as she described
how the Wrigley neighborhood used to feel more family-friendly.
“But in the last ten years, I see a change where it’s drastically just
declining, declining. The whole neighborhood has changed…I think a lot
of traffic just moved in. The older people that owned good homes moved
out because they were scared,” she said. To emphasize her point about
feeling unsafe in her own neighborhood, Patel added that once she and
her husband were held up at gunpoint. They now close their pharmacy
early.
There’s a melting pot of shops and businesses in that area. Over a
couple of blocks of Pacific Avenue, residents can stroll past a cigar
shop, a dry cleaner, a beauty salon, a panaderia, a cocktail bar, and a
Chinese restaurant. Early that evening, there were few people on the
sidewalk. Many shops were already dark before 8:30pm.
No business leaders that Thursday night said they would commit to
forming any kind of group that could support any plans along the lines
of Bixby Knolls’ revitalization efforts.
Portillo acknowledged that the area needs a change, but he and others at
the meeting acknowledged that they need leadership from both the
residents and the business owners.
“Because it is a really cool area. It’s just been neglected,” Portillo
said, addressing the small group. “I mean, you guys know that. But the
problem is that it’s been neglected because we don’t do anything about
it, and I’m not going to sit there and cry and say ‘How come you’re not
doing something?’”
