I'm no mental health professional, but I'm prepared to diagnose a malady that is rampant in Salem: parking space mania. Some of the symptoms are:
-- Feeling that something is seriously wrong if it isn't possible to park in a downtown block where your intended destination is located.
-- Driving in circles around downtown looking for an on-street parking space even though a totally free parking structure with plenty of open spaces is close by.
-- Freaking out at the prospect that any number, even just a few, of on-street downtown parking spaces will be lost, even if this would make the Historic District more attractive and vibrant.
I bring this up because I went to another Downtown Streetscape open house this evening. I've been to the previous open houses, and the notice for the one both intrigued and worried me.
Intrigued, because I was curious about what changes had been made to the concepts that seemingly were in close to final form last April, when I made a web page about them. See:
Worried, because as indicated by the language circled in red in the open house invitation, some unnamed "stakeholders" had a chance to weigh in on the Streetscape plan over the summer. I don't like that term, stakeholders, since I consider that the citizens of Salem are the ones with the biggest stake in every policy issue, including how downtown looks and feels.
I've gotten mixed messages as to who ended up influencing the refinements to the original Streetscape plan recommended by consultants. City Public Works staff reportedly had a say in this. I suppose this makes sense, though I wonder why they didn't provide their input during the lengthy period of public input on draft Streetscape proposals.
Tonight the team of consultants revealed what has been left out of the final design proposals I described in my web page. I wouldn't call these "refinements," but rather selling out to the above-mentioned parking space mania -- since I was told that concerns about losing on-street parking spaces led to the changes above.
They're delicately called "Longer-Term Projects."
What this really means is that the above-mentioned stakeholders, which I suspect includes some parking-space-crazed downtown businesses, put enough pressure on City officials to get the Mid-Block Landscape Pockets, Front Street Crossing, and Parklets Program shelved.
The frustrating thing is that each of these Streetscape design elements makes great good sense.
Look at the photos of how much better Commercial Street, and also Liberty Street, would look if a couple of parking spaces were used for bulb-out landscaping that would calm traffic (without diminishing the width of traffic lanes) while beautifying the street.
Likewise, the Parklets Program would utilize a few parking spaces in creative ways, either temporarily or permanently. But somehow parking space mania outweighed the benefits of making downtown Salem a more attractive place to work, live, dine, and shop.
The consultants told me that because Front Street is a state highway, it would take more time to improve pedestrian crossings between downtown and Riverfront Park. But this doesn't explain why those crossings have been removed from the Streetscape plan.
Gosh, would it really be so bad if parents, children, and other living beings were able to walk more safely and conveniently across Front Street to enjoy Riverfront Park, while maybe slowing traffic on that street down a little bit?
There's no doubt that however the Streetscape project turns out, it will make downtown more attractive. It just is disappointing to see the aspirations for this project diminished due to input from unnamed "stakeholders."
Hopefully the City Council, acting as the Urban Renewal Agency board, will seriously consider reinstating the Longer-Term Projects as immediate priorities. The schedule above shows this could happen on February 19, 2019.
These related to (1) secrecy, (2) use of Parking Budget funds, (3) managing of funds related to downtown Salem, and (4) current board members/leadership.
About six months later, with essentially zero Main Street Association accomplishments to their credit, I discussed the City Council giving the group a $32,000 grant in "Here's why Salem needs a genuine downtown association." In that post I noted:
Some six months after its public kickoff, Salem Main Street Association just has a blank "under construction" web site nor any other online presence other than a Facebook page with no postings since April 12. This isn't a sign of a vibrant group that is reaching out to Salem citizens and the downtown community.
Yet it just got $32,000 from the City of Salem.
Well, nothing has changed.
The Salem Main Street Association still has no discernible accomplishments, nor any online presence, or any sign that it is reaching out to downtown business owners or citizens in general. Here's what pops up from a Google search: a Salem Weekly story and links to my blog posts about the organization.
Carole Smith, a downtown resident and business owner, drew my attention to the one-year anniversary of the formation of the Salem Main Street Association in a recent email message.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of the announcement of the new downtown organization. Are you thinking of doing a re-cap on all their successes?
So far I can’t find any website. The city gave them $30,000 several months ago -- what have they done with it? The business owners don’t even know the name of the organization. We have NEVER received any communication from them.
The Salem Downtown Partnership (SDP) only had 9 months of funding but we had over 40 businesses participating in First Wednesdays every month. We held customer contests with prizes. We had $5,000 Good Idea Grants (for businesses who work together to provide events, etc, that bring people downtown, or enhance the downtown environment).
SDP published a map showing downtown businesses on one side and downtown restaurants and bars on the other. We compiled over 200 email addresses of downtown business and property owners. We communicated regularly with businesses and property owners via US mail and via Constant Comment. We had a weekly newsletter.
We had monthly board meetings which businesses and property owners were encouraged to attend. We held four Mainstreet committee meetings each month on which downtown residents, business and property owners participated. We were a recognized Oregon Mainstreet Organization.
We realized downtown merchants wanted more lights in trees during the holidays (and winter months) but there was nowhere to plug them in, and we wanted a cleaner downtown, but there were very few water faucets available for power washing, so we had grants we gave to any business or property owner so they could install an electrical outlet and/or water faucet at no cost to them. We bought power washers and sidewalk scrubbers which the organization owned and used.
What has this new organization done over the past year? People don’t even know who they are and what their name is.
Remember, you asked me to give them a chance. Is one year enough of a chance? I think this group is a big failure, don’t you?
Yes, I do think the Salem Main Street Association is a big failure. A year certainly is enough to give them to show what they can accomplish, which is essentially nothing.
Their Facebook page has just 54 "likes" and only a couple of posts, the most recent being a December 2017 post about a Go Nuts Downtown promotion, which seems to be the only thing the Salem Main Street Association has been involved with since its inception.
And their web page continues to be Under Construction with no content.
Hopefully City officials will rethink its commitment to the Salem Main Street Association. The concerns I noted at its inception have been borne out. It isn't really an association, since it has no members, just a self-selected board of directors. And it is wrongly classified as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, which it clearly isn't.
Donations to a c(3) are tax-deductible, while donations to a c(6) aren't. Thus the Salem Main Street Association is competing for tax-deductible donations that are only supposed to be available to genuine charities, not business leagues.
Also, there's the potential of business owners getting a tax deduction for a contribution to the Salem Main Street Association, which then engages in promotional activities that benefit those same owners. I'm not saying this has happened, or will happen, but the possibility of it happening is another reason for concern about the Salem Main Street Association being wrongly classified as a 501(c)3 organization.
Another way of putting this is that charitable contributions are supposed to broadly benefit people in a community, not specific business owners.
As noted above, the City of Salem needs to reconsider its policy of giving money from Parking District funds to the Salem Main Street Association, at least until the Association reorganizes itself as a 501(c)6 organization.
Bestowing those funds simply isn't right given that the Salem Main Street Association isn't an actual association, lacking members, and that the Association has wrongly incorporated as a 501(c)3 charitable organization.
As was alluded to above, Salem needs a genuine downtown organization. After a year, it's become evident that the Salem Main Street Association isn't capable of filling that role.
If you love Salem's downtown -- I sure do -- you'll want to see these photos I took at last night's Downtown Salem Streetscape Project open house.
There's some exciting improvements in the works for downtown sidewalks, alley entrances, and Front Street crossings to Riverfront Park. Traffic calming features got me especially enthused, since whatever makes downtown streets less freeway'ish is a very good thing.
Click on the image below to see the Adobe Spark page I made.
I came away enthused about emerging ideas for improving the downtown area, but in an advance post about the meeting the Breakfast on Bikes blogger encapsulated the Big Problem with this project:
The project team hasn't published any new materials, so there's not much to say yet - other than to continue to push the City for changes to carspace. Until we grapple with the disproportion and zoominess of carspace downtown, our fiddling with the sidewalks will be cosmetic, principally rearranging the deck chairs. This may yield incremental improvement, but it will not yield the enduring, structural change we need.
A secular Amen to that!
Below you'll see photos of part of the slide presentation made by the Walker Macy project consultants, plus photos of the boards scattered around the room where attendees could put orange dots to indicate what streetscape options they liked the most.
In my comments I'm going to focus on the "carspace" issue noted above, because the overarching problem with downtown Salem is the excessive amount of space devoted to three and four-lane one-way streets, which gives the Historic District an overly freeway'ish feel.
This slide shows some of the conclusions arising out of 90-minute focus group sessions held with people interested in various streetscape topics.
Note the "Focus on pedestrians."
Exactly nobody, from what I can tell, has said We want more cars downtown. After all, cars don't shop, eat at restaurants, or do any other of the things downtown offers. Only people on foot do, pedestrians. Yet as noted above, cars and the streets they drive on consume an inordinate amount of downtown space.
Otherwise, the recommendations speak for themselves. They seem rather obvious, but there's nothing wrong with pointing out obviousness, since often simple good ideas fail to get the attention they deserve because they're, well, so obvious.
Here's more of what the consultants heard. Consistency is a point worth emphasizing. There's a mash-mash of benches, trash cans, tree grates, and such on downtown sidewalks. Creating a consistent look would go a long way toward making the area more attractive.
This slide was used to show Salem's connection to highly productive farmland and beautiful natural areas. Not surprisingly, the consultants said agriculture and nature should be reflected in downtown streetscape themes.
Here's another obvious point that is good to keep in mind. Local retailers rely on sidewalk activity, while national retailers need limited sidewalk activity. So putting pedestrians front and center above vehicles is going to help local businesses most -- which should be the streetscape goal.
These are the four themes that arose out of the first phase of the Streetscape Project. Some specific streetscape examples are more interesting than the broad topics, as shown below.
Here's an example sidewalk. It looks appealing.
There aren't any "sandwich boards" cluttering up the sidewalk, as currently is the case around Liberty and Court streets. Plantings provide a buffer between people and cars. Sidewalk table seating is adjacent to the business/restaurant, rather than next to the street. All good ideas.
This slide is of Sisters in central Oregon, which recently had a makeover on its main streets. Natural plantings now make Sisters much more attractive. What the consultants didn't mention is that Sisters has two-lane, two-way streets, even though "Main Street" is a state highway.
Traffic crawls along at 20-25 mph or less, which makes being a pedestrian in this charming town wonderfully pleasant. Salem has a lot more to learn from Sisters than just its plantings. People flock to Sisters because it is people-friendly, not autocentric.
This slide shows how adding trees to State and Court streets creates a sort of natural connectivity between downtown and Riverfront Park to the west, and the Capitol/Willamette University to the east.
Of course, when I saw this image I couldn't help but think of how City officials allowed the five large, beautiful, healthy Japanese Zelkova trees to be cut down for no good reason in 2013, after the Public Works Director, Peter Fernandez, made an outrageous backroom deal with the U.S. Bank president, Ryan Allbritton, to have the trees removed.
(Yeah, I've mentioned this before on my blogs, and I'm going to keep on mentioning it until the City of Salem forthrightly addresses what Fernandez did, and makes sure nothing like this ever happens again.)
This board shows some Social Spaces streetscape examples.
You can see that each of the ideas got many orange spots on the "I like" side, aside from a few people who didn't like the idea of using some spaces for parklets. Note how many people can enjoy a few parking spaces that otherwise would have an empty car sitting in them.
I like the rather quirky wayfinding signs already in downtown. Here's some ideas on the Wayfinding and Art topic.
Having more planted areas and lighting downtown got a lot of sticker love. Again, that wide sidewalk in the image on the left would be much more feasible if more downtown streets were two-lane and two-way. Lots of plantings and lots of lanes work against each other.
Here's the Knit Downtown Together board. Again, more trees, a clear unobstructed walking zone, consistency and creativity in the streetscape design. All laudable goals -- which would be easier to achieve if the sidewalks were wider and the streets were narrower.
A Rapid Response question in the newspaper about what should replace Nordstrom elicited a bunch of diverse answers. Like, another major retailer; a lot of small shops; a bookstore; a new City Hall; a homeless shelter.
None of these ideas made me go WOW! But that's what downtown needs, places that have a Wow Factor. We shouldn't be content with simply replacing Nordstrom with more of the same.
This is an opportunity to refashion the two story space into a major people magnet, an attraction that is a must-see on every visitor's list, as well as a place that draws Salem residents in with an equally strong attractive force.
My idea is...
Convert the Nordstrom space into a town square.
Salem doesn't have a central public gathering place, like other cities do (Portland, for example, has Pioneer Courthouse Square). So let's re-fashion the Nordstrom space into one.
This would require Urban Renewal money.
A follow-up Statesman Journal story, "What's next for Salem Center without Nordstrom," had a figure for the value of the Nordstrom space, which Nordstrom owns. It was $8.9 million. That's doable, given that the downtown urban renewal district has some $20 million to $30 million in available funds, from what I've been told.
Naturally I picture extensive remodeling.
The solid stark windowless brick external walls would need to be opened up. Some of the interior would be open to the sidewalk and street, though covered. Plantings, water features, art, and such would be used to create a vibrant space for people to sit, stroll, eat, listen to street musicians, relax, read.
Food trucks could be located in this part of the covered, yet open, town square. They'd periodically rotate with other food trucks to keep the dining options variable. There'd be a stage where events could be scheduled, plus open mic opportunities at certain times of the day or night.
The rest of the space would be enclosed. It could be "creative retail" with a street bazaar or Saturday Market feel to it. The second floor would be refashioned so a spiral walkway leads to it from the ground floor. Ideally the roof would be glassed in some fashion to make the second floor airy and light.
Everything sold in the Town Square space would have to be Oregon-made, and preferably Salem-made. This would be a showcase for local creativity, talent, agriculture, brewing, and such.
So my vision, OK, my dream, is that public money -- urban renewal funds -- would convert the Nordstrom space into (1) a covered town square (open to the elements on two sides) and (2) an enclosed second floor with a variety of shopping/browsing options.
Now, all that stands between me and my dream is that sometimes nasty naysayer, reality.
I have no idea if the Nordstrom space in the Salem Center mall could be retrofitted in the way I've described. I do recall some talk a while back about modifying the windowless walls of Salem Center to make them more appealing. Salem Center is an old style enclosed mall, while the trend nowadays leans more toward making malls look as much as possible like a old time'y main street.
Which pretty much describes Salem's downtown, of course, aside from the freeway'ish three-lane one-way streets that detract a lot from the ambience of the Historic District.
Looking more broadly at what could replace Nordstrom, I think City officials and others involved in scoping out possibilities should be much more creative than simply envisioning either another major retailer, or dividing up the Nordstrom space into small retail square footages.
This is an opportunity to modernize Salem Center, to make a big chunk of the mall into a Wow! inducing place, a place, as I said before, that's a powerful people magnet. My Town Square notion strikes me as one way to accomplish that. Obviously there are many other ways.
Let's not think small and more-of-the-same when it comes to dealing with the exit of Nordstrom from downtown. Let's think big and wildly creatively about the space now occupied by Nordstrom.
About 20 of us, citizens and consultants, had a spirited 90-minute discussion in the Library's Anderson Room about downtown trees and other vegetation, though the discussion also included broader Streetscape topics.
Here's 30 great ideas generated by the Focus Group:
(1) Eliminate a lane of traffic on some downtown streets with three or four lanes so there's more room for trees and people on the sidewalks.
(2) Define the personality of both downtown and the entire city, then make Streetscape reflect that personality.
(3) Come up with a unified, repetitive, simple Streetscape design.
(4) Trees need room to grow. Give them that space.
(5) Don't forget habitat for songbirds and butterflies. Pigeons aren't enough wildlife for downtown.
(6) Beauty lies in vegetative diversity, not a monoculture of similar trees.
(7) Add evergreens to downtown, both conifers and broadleaf trees, for greenness after deciduous leaves drop.
(8) Create a City culture where trees are honored, and aren't cut down for no good reason like the U.S. Bank trees on State Stree were.
(9) Allow trees to grow large and gorgeous so they create a Wow! when viewed, not just a ho-hum OK.
(10) The downtown area needs more water walkways. Let's use our creeks and river to better advantage.
(11) Have a living Christmas tree on the Chemeketa Parkade to draw people into downtown rather than having a Christmas tree at Riverfront Park.
(12) Convert the top level of the Chemeketa Parkade into a a green space that can host the Saturday Market. Great views!
(13) Use some parking spaces for mini-parklets where people can sit and congregate.
(14) Focus on native plants. Bring local agriculture into downtown: filberts, grape vines, for example.
(15) Put business signs at street/eye level, not high up on buildings where they can be obscured by tree branches.
(16) Focus on people, not cars. No car has ever shopped at a downtown business, just people.
(17) Have some city-owned chairs that people can move around the downtown area for flexible seating.
(18) Have good pedestrian lighting everywhere. And have lights in trees for much of the year, not just around Christmas.
(19) A lot more awnings would be awesome. Make them wide and colorful. Think Paris! They'd shelter downtown visitors from both rain and sun.
(20) With GPS and smart phones, business signs aren't needed as much for way-finding. So make them less obtrusive and more attractive. Also, ditch the "sandwich signs" on the sidewalk, since they don't look good and take up valuable space.
(21) Include maintenance of trees, hanging baskets, and such in every step of the Streetscape design. Have drip systems for watering.
(22) State and Court streets should connect nicely to Riverfront Park, on one end, and to Willamette University and the Capitol, on the other end.
(23) Involve downtown business owners in the Streetscape project.
(24) Have built-in underground reservoirs for watering.
(25) Have street level color in vegetation.
(26) Downtown should have water features to drown out traffic noise and relax people.
(27) Have groves of trees and seating at the corners of blocks where they will be most visible.
(28) Use vegetation and planters to create a barrier between sidewalk seating and traffic. People will be looking at greenery, not vehicles speeding by.
(29) Give up some parking for great design, and people will flock to downtown -- like they do to 21st and 23rd streets in northwest Portland.
I'm sharing an email message that Carole Smith, a downtown business owner and resident, sent to me recently. She isn't happy with how the City of Salem streetscape project is being conducted, to put it mildly.
The whole emphasis is on sidewalks. As shown above, "alleys and roads not part of [project] scope." So they really should have called this a Sidewalkscape project, which is much more limited than a true Streetscape plan -- such as the one proposed for Salem several years ago.
This is disappointing.
Someone I talked with at the open house put it nicely: "City of Salem staff like to decide on their own what the scope of a project should be, then tell citizens that nothing outside of the bounds of what has already been decided can be talked about."
That someone wasn't Carole Smith, by the way. But the quote above echoes what Smith says below.
I asked Carole if it'd be OK with her to share the message. Sure, she said.
I was glad to hear that, because she was one of the originators of a downtown streetscape planning project that generated a lot of enthusiasm. I made an Adobe Spark web page describing this effort that has gotten over 8,500 views -- which shows that many people in Salem are interested in streetscaping the downtown area.
Unfortunately, the bold vision of the initial streetscape project has fallen by the wayside, as you'll read in Carole Smith's critique of the current effort. I admire how frankly Smith lays out her concerns. You may disagree with her, but for sure you will know where she stands.
Well, its been 30 hours since the last meeting of the Streetscape Work Group. We met yesterday to tour the downtown with the new consultants to talk about what ideas we have for streetscape.
Lets start at the beginning:
At the first meeting of the Streetscape Work Group we were told the following about Streetscape.
1. These streets are off-limits: Liberty, Commercial, Front, High, Center, Marion, Trade, Ferry. That only leaves State, Court and Chemeketa Streets.
2. We will build this project in phases that might take 15 years to complete.
At the second meeting we were told:
1. Riverfront Park is NOT part of our program. 2. Alleyways are NOT part of our program. 3. Any new sidewalks in the past 10 years are off limits. 4. All bulbed-out sidewalk corners are off limits. 5. Connecting Riverfront Park to the Willamette University campus and the Capitol building via streetscaping is not happening.
Yesterday I found out the City did not include any reduction of any traffic lanes downtown.
When I asked the consultants about it, they responded with “Well, maybe you should do this project first, then later, when you change the Traffic Study you can take away lanes of traffic and fix the rest of the the plan." WHAT? We don’t want to do this project twice. That doubles the cost and doubles the interference with downtown businesses.
So everything the citizens wanted to do downtown is dead. The City staff decreased the project to the point they are only “redecorating” downtown, not changing how it is used as a strategy to entice new businesses into our community. This is like “redecorating” a slum in hopes no one notices it is a slum.
The retail rental rates downtown are the lowest in all of Salem. That means only weak businesses locate here because they cannot afford market rate rents that are changed everywhere else in Salem. We have all the money we need to do a major project and change how Salem uses its downtown and how it functions as an economic driver in our community.
The streetscape project the citizens have visualized over the past five years included reducing lanes of traffic, possibly removing traffic signals (and installing stop signs), and connecting Riverfront Park, the downtown, State Capitol, and Willamette University to encourage more foot traffic downtown for our businesses.
In the past, a former manager of Salem Center told me the hardest problem to overcome when chain stores visit Salem to decide whether they want to open a store in Salem Center is the negative condition of our downtown. The chain store representatives love the neighborhoods, the schools, and the community, but they baik at the condition of downtown and the number of vacant spaces there. Our downtown is dirtier and more vacant than ever today.
Will the streetscape project the city is envisioning help downtown? Probably, for awhile. But we are missing the bigger opportunity to really make our downtown reflect who we are as a unique community. We could be on the cover of magazines and be a Mecca for other cities wanting to do what we did. Now we will just have a mediocre downtown again.
And, 15 years to complete the project?
We know from past experiences that when we phase projects in downtown they never get past the first or second year. In the streetscape we did in the early 1990’s we did one project, then the next year we hired consultants to design “stage 2” but it was never constructed. That was the end. Once the City Council changes and priorities change, streetscape will fall by the wayside and never be completed.
So who made the decisions to exclude so many items from citizen discussion?
Why are we allowing city staff who don’t live here or pay any property tax here to dictate to our citizens what they can dream about for our downtown? Why can’t we make our downtown unique by making it reflect us? The City of Salem only wants to copy what other cities have done. That will not make us unique. When we have the ideas and money to be great, why should the citizens settle for mediocre just because City staff have no imagination or courage?
During the Streetscape Work Group meetings we were not allowed to talk among ourselves, and even when we emailed each other outside the meetings we were required to "cc" City staff. We were not privy to any communications between City staff, but they could spy on our discussions outside the meetings. This is supposed to be a democracy, not a dictatorship. If one group has to share their communications, why aren’t all communications shared?
How did the City staff get so much power? Where are the City councilors? Why are they allowing staff to limit our dreaming and the expenditure of our funds?
Our accountant told me, “All the assets and funds the city has are OWNED by the citizens, held in trust through the City of Salem, for the CITIZENS' BENEFIT." To understand how we want to “benefit” the City staff need to hear from us on what WE want. If that is true, what right do the city staff have to tell us what we can and cannot talk about? It is our money, so we should be allowed to talk about anything we want.
Yesterday one of the consultants asked me what the City could do to get my support.
Without thinking I replied, “Respect, the city could show us respect." That would change everything. Respect not to force a non-functioning downtown assocation down our throats, respect to listen to what we want for streetscape, respect to listen to us and work WITH us, all of us, not just the “young people” downtown.
Every time I attend a City of Salem meeting I feel like we are told what we will get, instead of being asked what we want. That is a huge difference. It is our money, this is our city, why can’t we get what WE want?
I don’t understand.
If the City would sit back and let the citizens design this project, Salem would benefit by building a unique streetscape that would give us national attention and could show other communities how to design a similar streetscape that reflects them, the way our streetscape reflects us, our culture, our unique history, and how we want to guide our future.
Who wouldn’t want that?
Who doesn’t want to be successful and attract positive attention and accolades? Why do we strive for and feel comfortable with mediocrity? We have great people here with great ideas for free. Yet we continually hire people and staff from Portland to come tell us what we can have, supported by City staff with no vision, voted on by a City Council that doesn’t understand.
It is a sad state of affairs. Is it too late to change this trajectory? What if people stood up in the upcoming Streetscape meetings and said they support what we want? Would it mean anything? Is it too late?
First, it's peculiar that this group remains so secretive, since the kickoff event had some lofty goals: (1) Advocates for downtown Salem businesses, property owners and residents (2) Implements marketing and promotion of downtown Salem (3) Manages funds related to the economic vitality of downtown Salem
Yet the Salem Main Street Association still doesn't have a web site, aside from the one above. The small print says, "We're under construction. Please check back for an update soon." That's what it said nine months ago, as I recall.
The Association has a Facebook page with a grand total of 52 likes and 4 actual posts, with only a single reference to anything having to do with promoting downtown Salem: a Go Nuts Downtown event.
Yet the City Council bestowed $32,000 in Parking District funds to the group last October, as I wrote about in "Here's why Salem needs a genuine downtown association." What bothered me then, as now, is that the Salem Main Street Association actually isn't an association, since it has no members.
Rather, it is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization with a self-selected board of directors. Meaning, the board established by the founders chooses new board members. Since there aren't any members -- such as downtown business owners -- Salem Main Street Association isn't at all like a real downtown association.
...None the less, they asked for $32,000 from Parking District funds. And last night the City Council passed an ordinance that allows the City Manager to give grants that "further economic promotion activity." Download Resolution Economic Promotion
Interestingly, the resolution doesn't mention the Salem Main Street Association. I have to assume that a separate budget document authorizes the $32,000 to go to that group, rather than being available to other organizations that might want to engage in downtown economic promotions.
The Salem Main Street Association shouldn't be a 501(c)3 organization. Rather, it should be a 501(c)6 organization. I've concluded this after looking at IRS descriptions of the two sorts of non-profit organizations.
A (c)3 organization is what usually comes to mind when people think of a charitable organization. Here's how the IRS describes the exempt purposes of a (c)3 organization:
The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals. The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.
None of these purposes is even close to the stated goals of the Salem Main Street Association. So the City of Salem shouldn't be giving money to a group that has wrongly classified itself as a 501(c)3 organization instead of a 501(c)6 organization.
Here's part of the IRS description of a (c)6:
Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code provides for the exemption of business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate boards, boards of trade and professional football leagues, which are not organized for profit and no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.
A business league is an association of persons having some common business interest, the purpose of which is to promote such common interest and not to engage in a regular business of a kind ordinarily carried on for profit.
...Chambers of commerce and boards of trade are organizations of the same general type as business leagues. They direct their efforts at promoting the common economic interests of all commercial enterprises in a trade or community, however.
Now, this accurately describes what the Salem Main Street Association is all about. It should have been organized as a 501(c)6 organization, since it seeks to promote the common economic interests of all downtown businesses, property owners, and residents.
So you might be wondering, why is this a big deal?
Well, once I was the executive director of a genuine 501(c)3 organization, Oregon Health Decisions (a bioethics organization). These are some of the problems with the Salem Main Street Association being wrongly classified as a 501(c)3.
Donations to a c(3) are tax-deductible, while donations to a c(6) aren't. Thus the Salem Main Street Association is competing for tax-deductible donations that are only supposed to be available to genuine charities, not business leagues.
Also, there's the potential of business owners getting a tax deduction for a contribution to the Salem Main Street Association, which then engages in promotional activities that benefit those same owners. I'm not saying this has happened, or will happen, but the possibility of it happening is another reason for concern about the Salem Main Street Association being wrongly classified as a 501(c)3 organization.
Another way of putting this is that charitable contributions are supposed to broadly benefit people in a community, not specific business owners.
As noted above, the City of Salem needs to reconsider its policy of giving money from Parking District funds to the Salem Main Street Association, at least until the Association reorganizes itself as a 501(c)6 organization.
Bestowing those funds simply isn't right given that the Salem Main Street Association isn't an actual association, lacking members, and that the Association has wrongly incorporated as a 501(c)3 charitable organization.
Last night there was an open house kickoff for the Downtown Salem Streetscape Plan.
Held in the ground floor meeting room at Courthouse Square, I felt a lot of energy and enthusiasm from the good number of attendees, City of Salem staff, and the consultants hired to oversee the project.
People could use stickers to indicate a part of downtown where they had an idea for improvements, where they customarily entered the downtown area, and where they thought the heart of downtown was.
Not surprisingly, Court and Liberty got the most heart stickers. And you can see that many attendees were inspired to write thoughts about downtown on post-it notes.
This is what I said: "Liberty, Commercial, and Court Streets have too many lanes. Losing some lanes will make downtown much more people-friendly."
Strangely, though, this Streetscape project is ignoring streets.
The whole emphasis is on sidewalks. As shown above, "alleys and roads not part of [project] scope." So they really should have called this a Sidewalkscape project, which is much more limited than a true Streetscape plan -- such as the one proposed for Salem several years ago.
This is disappointing.
Someone I talked with at the open house put it nicely: "City of Salem staff like to decide on their own what the scope of a project should be, then tell citizens that nothing outside of the bounds of what has already been decided can be talked about."
The Downtown Streetscape Plan will help imagine and build improvements to our City's downtown sidewalks now and into the future... The "streetscape" is the area in the public realm between private property lines or the exteriors of buildings and the curb or street. Generally, the streetscape is the sidewalk space that people see as they drive or bike by.
No, this isn't true. Planners actually generally look upon the entire street as the canvas on which streetscaping takes place. For example, here's a definition from the University of Delaware.
Streetscape is a term “to describe the natural and built fabric of the street, and defined as the design quality of the street and its visual effect.”
Obviously sidewalks are the space between buildings and the street. The wider a street is, the less room there is for sidewalks, bike lanes, and other people-friendly areas, as contrasted to the "auto zone" of the street. The original Salem Streetscape planners envisioned downtown streets losing a lane for this reason.
At the open house there were photographs of streetscape elements from both other cities and Salem. Attendees could put an orange dot on the elements that they liked the most. Here's some that got a lot of sticker love. Note that they presuppose a wide sidewalk.
Now, by no means am I saying that just because City of Salem staff have artificially constrained the Downtown Streetscape Plan to basically only be about sidewalks, and not alleys or streets, is this a useless exercise.
Quite the contrary: I expect a lot of good to come out of this effort.
Good ideas. Good visions. Good improvements to downtown. I just hope that the consultants will allow downtown-lovers like myself to indulge in thinking that is outside of the box of sidewalks alone.
The most off-putting thing I encounter downtown isn't litter or homeless people. It is the freeway'ish three and four lane one-way streets. They scream Drive as fast as you can through downtown; don't stop to shop, eat, or recreate.
I've been told by City staff that changes to downtown streets can't be made without altering the City's transportation plan. OK, so change the damn transportation plan!
I'll end with a photo of a comment made by someone at last night's open house that both expressed a great wish for downtown, and did so with some very cool penmanship. Less traffic noise. More peaceful for people.
Salem no longer has a downtown association. We need one. What happened at last night's City Council meeting is only one of many reasons why.
But before I explain what transpired at the meeting, a bit of relevant history about how downtown lost its downtown association is in order. I wrote about this in a couple of blog posts.
My November 2013 post "Should Salem City Manager be known as Exalted Emperor Linda Norris?" explained how the existing downtown association, Salem Downtown Partnership, had its contract terminated by the City Council after Chuck Bennett (then a city councilor, now Mayor) made a motion to allow the City of Salem to take control of Economic Improvement District money that had been funding Salem Downtown Partnership.
The City Manager, Norris, then essentially acted like a one-person downtown association. A Statesman Journal story quoted in the blog post said:
Business booster groups for merchants have a rocky history in this city, but Salem City Manager Linda Norris has personally taken on the task of marketing downtown.
For about nine months, Norris has overseen marketing and beautification plans with advice from her hand-picked City Manager Downtown Steering Committee. The 16-member group, includes Norris, Urban Development Department Director John Wales and representatives of business interests.
Norris, with her advisory group, determines the use of about $313,000 in funds collected from property owners in downtown’s Economic Improvement District.
A few days ago I talked with someone in-the-know about how the Salem (Oregon) City Manager, Linda Norris, ended up controlling on her own $215,000 in Economic Improvement District funds paid by downtown businesses.
It was a lengthy conversation. This person asked to talk with me because he/she was so disturbed about how the EID was handled, and liked my blog-reporting on other downtown issues.
I was on the phone with this person for about 90 minutes. I learned a lot about how the City of Salem ended up cancelling the contract Salem Downtown Partnership had to administer the Economic Improvement District (EID) money.
The headline, so to speak, is this:
Norris and other City of Salem staff set up Salem Downtown Partnership to fail. Instead of working cooperatively and collaboratively with this duly-selected organization that represented downtown businesses, the City undermined its efforts in various ways.
After describing a lot of details about how City staff orchestrated the failure of the downtown association, I said:
Rather, the real concern is with how the City of Salem, in the person of Linda Norris, is mismanaging the EID funds contributed by businesses. She is treating the money as her own private fiefdom. But what downtown really needs is an independent organization that decides how to promote the area and is an autonomous voice for downtown interests.
Thus frustration is high.
So much so, there is an effort to grab the City's attention to how badly it has screwed up the EID via a remonstrance process where the Economic Improvement District would be dissolved if, as the newspaper story says, "the city receives written objections from downtown property owners on which more than 33 percent of the assessment is levied."
That process succeeded, and the Economic Improvement District was dissolved, thanks to a campaign led by Carole Smith. Smith and her husband were the key businesspeople who got Salem Downtown Partnership up and running. Smith also ran against Chuck Bennett in the 2016 Mayoral race.
Rather, it is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization with a self-selected board of directors. Meaning, the board established by the founders chooses new board members. Since there aren't any members -- such as downtown business owners -- Salem Main Street Association isn't at all like a real downtown association.
A Salem Weekly cover story made this clear.
SMSA will have no members, meaning that all significant decisions will be made exclusively by its board. The board is self-selecting, itself appointing and replacing board members. Bylaws say that only “owners, employees, partners or associates of businesses and residents living downtown” may serve on the board.
None the less, they asked for $32,000 from Parking District funds. And last night the City Council passed an ordinance that allows the City Manager to give grants that "further economic promotion activity." Download Resolution Economic Promotion
Interestingly, the resolution doesn't mention the Salem Main Street Association. I have to assume that a separate budget document authorizes the $32,000 to go to that group, rather than being available to other organizations that might want to engage in downtown economic promotions.
I watched last night's City Council meeting via CCTV. What bothers me is the resemblance of what transpired yesterday with what happened back in 2013, when the City Manager started acting as a downtown association. Once again, funds to promote downtown are being doled out by the City Manager.
And City Council members asked very few questions about the $32,000 that's been earmarked for Salem Main Street Association. Guest councilor Mark Wigg (substituting for Tom Andersen) couldn't vote, but he did ask about a letter from Carole Smith that was critical of that money being awarded to the group.
Here's a video I made of the rubber stamping by the Council of the $32,000. Kristin Retherford, Urban Development Director, is first seen, then Mark Wigg. He can't even fully say Carole Smith's name before he is interrupted by Mayor Bennett (Bennett and Smith have a tangled history, to put it mildly).
The upshot of all this is that it points to the need for a genuine Salem downtown association. Once again, City of Salem political games are being played with Parking District money, just as happened before with Economic Improvement District funds.
The City Manager shouldn't be controlling how funds contributed by downtown businesses are spent.
This should be the responsibility of a genuine downtown association that is broadly representative of not only downtown businesses, but also people who live downtown, and maybe also people like me who patronize downtown businesses and care about the success of the Historic District area.
I get the impression that Salem Main Street Association is angling to be treated like a downtown association without actually being one. I also have a suspicion that Mayor Bennett and other City officials want to have parking meters installed downtown, and they see the Salem Main Street Association as a willing accomplice in helping to make that happen.
Lastly, below is what Carole Smith said in a letter that was included in last night's agenda, being advance public testimony on the ordinance that allows the City Manager to make economic promotion grants from Parking District money. I wish members of the City Council had discussed her concerns before approving the ordinance.
And it is indeed weird that, as Smith notes, some six months after its public kickoff, Salem Main Street Association just has a blank "under construction" web site nor any other online presence other than a Facebook page with no postings since April 12. This isn't a sign of a vibrant group that is reaching out to Salem citizens and the downtown community.
Yet it just got $32,000 from the City of Salem. I agree with Carole Smith. Something feels wrong here. Read on for Carole's critique.
Honorable City Council,
Sorry to write to you again. I notice the award of the Parking District funds may be awarded to the new Mainstreet Organization
I want you all to know, this organization has not made any attempt to communicate with the business and property owners downtown. The board has not committed any of their own funds to communication with downtown business/property owners. They were created in secret and they have refused to name their board of directors. This board discriminates against the majority of downtown and property/business owners downtown by not allowing them on their board.
Patricia at 1895 Cider Shop, a board member of the Mainstreet Organization, told me the present board did not ask any "'old people' downtown to join the board." This is clear discrimination.
The organization is a 503.C.3 Charitable Organization instead of a 501.C.6 like other downtown organizations. A charitable organization is not the correct structure for a downtown organization.
The Mainstreet Organization elected to have "no members". This means they do not represent anyone but themselves. When new board members are elected they can only be elected by the present board member, not the downtown community. They DO NOT REPRESENT the downtown community.
The Mainstreet program has existed now for over a year and never once have they communicated with the downtown business and property owners. They do not communicate when their board meetings are, they do not have a website, they do not email us, they do not represent us and they have had over a year to do so. This show they have no intention of working with us, or listen to us. If they are unwilling to use their own funds to create this organization then they don't have much invested and you should not fund them until they show they are personally financially committed to the downtown community.
Please do not award this organization the Parking District funds. We desperately need a downtown organization that represents us, formed by us, supporting programs and projects we want and run by us. This is NOT that organization. They do not deserve funding until they show they stop discriminating against us, start representing us, are willing to work with us, and LISTEN to what we want done downtown. Until then, no funds.
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