GILROY
– The success of downtown events, most recently the July 12
Garlic City Fun Run car show, is adding to the potential for making
Gilroy’s lagging main street the town’s future cultural hub.
GILROY – The success of downtown events, most recently the July 12 Garlic City Fun Run car show, is adding to the potential for making Gilroy’s lagging main street the town’s future cultural hub.
Although the car show organizers do not have final fund-raising tallies available for their third-annual event, South Valley Street Rods President Carl Swank said the event drew nearly 6,000 people and registered 386 cars at $20 a pop. Last year, the event’s raffles alone generated $4,000 – proceeds that get donated to the D.A.R.E anti-drug program and Gilroy High School.
“We could set this up other places, but putting it downtown makes it more of a family event,” Swank said. “People can shop, go to restaurants. … As long as you have entertainment for them, people are going to have a good time.”
The Gilroy Downtown Development Corporation has been averaging nearly one such downtown event per month in recent years. The July car show and the June antique fair, which hosted nearly 10,000 people, are two of the larger draws.
The GDDC, along with the Garlic Festival, co-sponsor and help organize the car show with the South Valley Street Rods.
The GDDC has added to the number of days the downtown flee market operates and included a Cinco de Mayo celebration this year.
“You put all this together with things the city is doing and you have a real momentum starting downtown,” GDDC President Reid Lerner said.
Lerner is referring to the development of an arts and cultural center at Seventh and Monterey streets as well as a stimulus package City Council has preliminarily approved. The stimulus package, among other things, temporarily waives fees for downtown developers.
Holding events downtown has had a “mixed-bag” reaction from some business owners along Monterey Street, says longtime downtown merchant Dave Peoples.
Peoples, who used to serve on the GDDC, welcomes downtown events. Peoples owns and operates The Nimble Thimble – a specialty quilting, embroidery and sewing store.
“I’m a merchant, so it’s always a positive thing to have more people than normal walking by,” Peoples said.
Peoples acknowledged, however, that having parking access cut off can be problematic for non-retail businesses such as doctors, dentists, lawyers or Realtors. The Monterey Street blocks that get cordoned off can differ based on the size of each event.
“We’ve always tried to take timing into consideration and plan the events so it has the least impact possible, but there’s always some amount of impact to someone,” Peoples said.
Peoples, who has seen the main street devolve from its heyday in the 1950s to its blighted state today, believes the downtown can be revitalized within the next three years.
Like Lerner, he is enthused by the arts center development as well as the upcoming development of a pocket park between Fifth and Sixth streets.
“It doesn’t take too many of those smaller projects to make the bigger picture look a lot better,” Peoples said.
