Gilroy
 – Downtown has suffered at the hands of big businesses.
In recent years, the commercial and retail explosion east of
U.S. 101 has drained life from the city’s former commercial center.
Now, after years of decline, downtown Gilroy is poised for a major
facelift that could help restore its vitality.
Gilroy – Downtown has suffered at the hands of big businesses.
In recent years, the commercial and retail explosion east of U.S. 101 has drained life from the city’s former commercial center. Now, after years of decline, downtown Gilroy is poised for a major facelift that could help restore its vitality.
In the next few years, 20 commercial, retail, and residential projects will crop up along Monterey Street. Two mixed-use buildings going up in the next year will create space for roughly two dozen businesses and 12 apartments at the northern gateway of the historic district. In the next four years, a major housing and retail project will go up at the old Cannery site on Lewis Street and a new arts center will stand across from the Caltrain station. And before any of these projects are complete, city officials expect to sign off on a new set of guidelines that carefully steer all future development along the Monterey Street corridor.
“A whole lot of things are in the works and we’re trying to come up with even more,” said Mayor Al Pinheiro, who has made downtown revitalization a centerpiece of his agenda.
The city’s main strip, now dotted with empty store fronts and poorly lit sidestreets, was once bustling with activity, according to Pinheiro. As a high school student in 1969, he worked at Karl’s Shoe Store on the corner of Fifth and Monterey. In the last 20 years, Karl’s and three other shoe stores on Fifth Street folded in the face of increasing competition from Kinney Shoes and other bargain stores.
“It’s not unlike many other towns,” Pinheiro reflected. “With the arrival of the box stores and shopping centers, it started taking away business from the area. The downtown’s had this happening for many years. It’s our job to do as many other cities have done and revitalize the downtown.”
A group of business owners, city staff, developers, and residents – known as the Downtown Specific Plan Task Force – have taken up that call, devoting the last two years to breathing new life into the area.
Task force chair and developer Gary Walton said his participation in the group has lent direction to his current project, an office and retail building on the southwest corner of Fourth and Monterey streets.
He said the building, set to open by Sept. 2005, is designed to bring a new feel to the area, one marked by an inviting, human-scale architecture with a Spanish-mission theme. The building will include clay roof tiles and earth-tone walls, along with an open courtyard featuring a fountain and outdoor fireplace. The types of businesses that move in are as important as the architecture, according to Walton, who is angling for pedestrian-friendly retailers such as bookstores and cafes.
“We’re looking for uses that people would congregate around,” he said.
Project Manager Gloria Pariseau said the combination of elements aim “to create a sense of place, to create a building that would be the gateway to the historic downtown.”
Similar themes will appear a few hundred feet south on the other side of Monterey, at the intersection with Lewis Street. Developers Mark Hewell and David Sheedy plan to construct a three-story building with 7,000 square feet of street-level retail space and 12 above-ground apartments on the vacant lot next to the Historic Strand Theatre. The building, set to open about the same time as Walton’s project, will also include a Spanish-mission theme.
A list of 20 projects – several of them a combination of housing and commercial space – are slated for development along Monterey Street in the next few years. City officials are currently reviewing three proposals that would bring 37 new apartments to the street, and expect more applications in the near future.
City Planner Gregg Polubinsky, who has worked with the Downtown Specific Plan Task Force since its inception, credits the group with re-igniting interest in the area.
“There wasn’t a whole lot of activity until the task force started to meet,” Polubinsky said. “All of these projects started being discussed within the last two years.”
Since commencing its work in Feb. 2003, the task force has served as the driving force behind policy shifts generally credited for spurring development. The list of changes includes a loosening of parking restrictions associated with building projects, allowing a number of idling projects to bypass the city’s annual competition for home-construction permits, and eliminating fees the city normally imposes on building projects.
City officials and developers agree that the last change – the elimination of “development-impact fees,” as they are known – has been the greatest catalyst for growth.
Sheedy estimated that development fees for his Lewis Street project would have run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“From a planning standpoint, when people start to see a lot of energy downtown, that only pushes more projects,” Polubinsky said. “It’s called the synergy of activity.”
That energy will likely continue with the construction of two major projects – a mixed community of housing and retail businesses at the old Cannery site, and a new arts center facing the Caltrain station.
The Cannery project, located on Lewis Street a block off Monterey, will include 200 single-family and rental properties and 40,000 square feet of retail, food, and office space, as well as a new headquarters for South County Housing, which is responsible for the project. The nonprofit group is in the process of removing an old railway tanker buried at the site and hopes to move forward with construction by 2006.
Meanwhile, the city is negotiating the purchase of 2.2 acres of property off Seventh and Monterey streets for a new cultural arts center, slated for completion by 2008.
A finishing touch to the downtown vision came on Wednesday with the announcement of a $2.5-million grant that will allow the city to revamp sidewalks on both sides of Monterey Street, between the Fourth- and Sixth-Street intersections. Improvements will include 10-foot-wide sidewalks, decorative lamp posts, and tree plantings – a continuation of upgrades that began two years ago at Eighth Street.
While many officials and residents hail the city’s plans as the eve of a major turnaround for the downtown area, some locals who have seen good and bad times are less certain.
Joyce Milla, who has lived in Gilroy since 1958 and worked for six years at Gilroy Bowl, welcomes the new apartments and retail space, but predicts the newcomers will make an existing problem even worse.
“It would be nice. Fix the street up,” Milla urged. “But you’ve got to have parking for these people. We don’t have any [parking] now. We do have a lot of empty buildings.”
Co-worker Keith Ikegami agreed. He predicted the switch from diagonal to parallel parking as part of the revamped street design will reduce the number of spots by 50 percent. He said bowlers are already forced to park in the vacant lot on the southwest corner of Lewis and Monterey, where Sheedy and Hewell will erect their three-story building.
Across the street, Joyce Duarte bides her time behind the counter at Monterey Street Antiques. Her store, piled high with old furniture and knickknacks, is vacant except for a passerby she chats with over the sound from a small television. Duarte will close her doors on Dec. 27 after 15 years in business.
She questioned whether anyone would rent a store or apartment “next to a tattoo parlor,” one of the local businesses she clearly finds incompatible with a thriving downtown.
Duarte welcomed the $2.5 million grant that will give a facelift to the street and sidewalk outside her front door, but she wondered if the city would have done better to begin street improvements on her block, between Fifth and Fourth, instead of across from the train station. The initial round of funding for the project, which calls for improvements to both sides of Monterey from Eighth Street to First street, only covered improvements up to the corner of Old City Hall – a block south of her antique shop.
“Al’s doing the best he can,” Duarte said, referring to the mayor. But for her and many other businesses that have vanished from Gilroy’s once vibrant main street, “it’s too little, too late.”
Despite past disappointments, city officials and developers alike believe the area is on track for a major revival.
“We have identified different ways of helping the downtown,” Pinheiro said, “and we’re seeing the results … If there ever was a time that there was momentum and excitement, it’s now.”
