Anaheim Street Businesses Band Together

By Kurt Helin
Editor

There are more than 600 businesses located on Anaheim Street between Junipero Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway. However, few people think of that area as a real shopping district.

The East Anaheim Street Business Alliance is trying to change that.

Since the start of the year, the Alliance, under the leadership of Rodney Wilson of Pacific Research & Strategies, has started working to carve out an identity for the area.

“There’s a lot of activity on the street and a lot of traffic,” said. “We’re talking about how to get those people to stop and shop.”

One way to do that is with a series of interesting meetings and speakers to draw the business owners together in one place. For example, next Tuesday, Mayor Bob Foster will address the group.

Next month, the group’s annual business luncheon and roundtable at Frenchy’s will feature City Manager Pat West, Kenneth Walker of Farmers & Merchants Bank, Dr. Joseph Magaddino of the California State University, Long Beach, office of economics, two City Council members and more. The topics will cover the future of business in Long Beach, Wilson said. Tickets for the event are still available.

The meetings are drawing the business owners together, and they generally agree on the need to soften the look of the street that many commuters see simply as a thoroughfare.

“We’re getting a lot of businesses joining now,” Wilson said. “They are talking about events, façade improvements and parking, among other things.”

While the shopping strip may not yet have much of an identity, some of its member businesses do.

For example, there is Joe Jost’s bar, Frenchy’s restaurant and the Long Beach Playhouse. Each is a well-known business in the community that has become a destination.

But Wilson said it would take some things that have been successful for other business districts to make the rest of the businesses succeed.

Façade improvements, which helped revitalize blocks of Fourth Street and in the East Village, is something being considered, Wilson said. There also could be better landscaping along the street, he added.

Then there is marketing the strip, to get people thinking about it, Wilson said. Areas such as Belmont Shore and Fourth Street have had success with their marketing efforts.

But that takes money.

Wilson is talking to businesses about starting a Business Improvement District, as has been done in a number of areas of the city. In those, the majority of business owners agree to a “self tax” for all businesses in the area, with the money spent for promotion or beautification. That is one way money is raised downtown, in Belmont Shore and in Bixby Knolls.

So far, Anaheim Street business owners like the idea, Wilson said.

“I’ve not heard anybody yet opposed to it,” he said. “It will help bring a little identity to East Anaheim Street.”

To find out more about the association, log on to www.easba.com. To reserve a spot for the June 3 roundtable, call 494-3800 or email info@easba.com. Admission is $15 a person.