Downtown

In 2021, I along with then-Vice Mayor Marty Medina formed the Downtown Improvement Ad Hoc Committee, tasked with finding ways the City could act to help struggling businesses in our downtown corridor. We met with city staff to plan the design for a new downtown plaza on the mostly-vacant and unusable Centennial Plaza, with the vision of creating needed space for community events, farmer’s markets, small performances and more. With a generous grant from the San Bruno Community Foundation, council approved the preliminary plan in 2022 and after a long period of relentless advocacy the plaza was approved for construction earlier this year and is slated to open by the end of 2024.

In addition, staff is actively working on improvements to Posy Park (adjacent to the Caltrain station) and is soliciting bids to renovate Florida Park.

The second initiative focused specifically on downtown is for beautification efforts, including greening, banners, and marquee sign and is currently underway. This includes finally revitalizing the planters along San Mateo Avenue, replanting street trees on Jenevein and the southern end of Downtown, the design and production of new custom themed City street pole banners for various times of the year, and replacing the marquee sign at the southern end of San Mateo Avenue with a scrolling digital LED board.

Another key recent change in our downtown was the introduction of paid parking. Our 2019 parking study revealed what we already knew; despite business struggling with fewer customers than desired, there never seemed to be any available parking in our downtown. Recent court decisions removed our ability to chalk tires to enforce our two-hour parking meters, so we needed to find a way to fund more expensive license-plate-reader technology and dedicated staff to do enforcement. The parking meter program was designed to discourage all-day street parking by nearby employees and residents and to encourage use of the eight city-owned parking lots that ring our downtown, with the proceeds from the meters funding our parking contractor LAZ to do enforcement not only in our Downtown but citywide.

The program has certainly had its hiccups as it has been introduced and we are working with staff to address needs like shorter-term options in the lots and introducing more free 20-minute green zones, but we have achieved the goal of 80% parking utilization on downtown streets and increased use of the cheaper city-owned lots. While some businesses are not in favor of these changes others are seeing boosts in their business from patrons who were previously unable to find any parking on the Avenue. I am committed to continue working with staff to improve the program and to ensure that any excess funds from the program be used for downtown improvement programs like the two mentioned above.

Since 2020 I have advocated for and seen our code enforcement department make substantial improvements, with a special focus on our downtown corridor. These efforts have resulted in fewer shabby storefronts and buildings taking more pride in their property and in our community.

Lastly, in my 2020 vision I advocated for a vacancy tax once we emerged from the economic downturn caused by the pandemic. While its debatable that we’ve actually emerged (it sure doesn’t feel like it) I’ve studied this concept as enacted in other cities to see if this would be an effective tool to encourage vacant downtown buildings to be sold or rented. It turns out that a vacancy tax would need to go before the voters and would not generate much revenue once enacted; in fact it would take several years to even recoup the cost of putting a measure on the ballot. In addition cities with such taxes find them very problematic to defend legally, so for all of these reasons I believe this is not something we should be focusing on right now.

The good news is that we have fewer than 10 vacancies out of 132 businesses in our downtown.

In 2019, the Planning Commission recommended, and the City Council approved, a new Streetscape program for downtown. The result was a plan to revitalize the streets, sidewalks, lighting and public fixtures along San Mateo Avenue to make the area more attractive for customers and for new businesses. This plan was necessary for us to understand exactly what we want and how much it will cost, which will enable the City to pursue grants or other forms of funding to start making changes.

Since the Streetscape Plan boundaries extend only to the public right-of-way (streets and sidewalks), we must also have a parallel effort to address the condition of some of the buildings on San Mateo Avenue. While there has been continued overall improvement to the building facades as new businesses have been opening along San Mateo Avenue, many buildings remain in various states of disrepair. Some of these buildings have been in this condition for quite some time and are evidence that the code enforcement measures currently available to the City are not adequate. I have a plan to address this:

1Establish a special enforcement zone along San Mateo Avenue, extending from El Camino Real to the Caltrain undercrossing. The enforcement zone would apply to commercial buildings with frontages along San Mateo Avenue. Establishing this zone would allow the city to enact specific ordinances applicable only to the San Mateo Avenue corridor and not affect other businesses elsewhere in San Bruno.

2Enact an ordinance establishing minimum upkeep standards for buildings in the special enforcement zone that would require building owners to maintain clean storefronts and replace broken fixtures, awnings and signage. Staff study and planning commission discussion would be required to establish exact standards for compliance. Our code enforcement department could first issue 30- or 90-day warnings to building owners who are out of compliance, and then if the issues are not addressed the City would impose recurring fines until the issues are addressed. Any fines collected could be maintained in a special fund used only to supplement existing maintenance and upkeep for the public right-of-way along San Mateo Avenue.

3To soften the impact of #2, the City could also enact a second ordinance establishing permit fee subsidies and expedited approval process for businesses in the special enforcement zone who apply for permits for new signage, replacement of awnings, and other items related to building exteriors which require City approval. This second ordinance could also help entice additional new businesses to open along San Mateo Avenue.

4Once the economy improves, the City could enact a third ordinance establishing a vacancy tax on building owners whose businesses remain vacant for an extended period. There are buildings along San Mateo Avenue which are in extreme disrepair that are being held as investment properties by owners who have no intention of leasing them out. It would not be appropriate to enact such an ordinance during the current economic climate, and any such an ordinance should include a provision for the council to temporarily suspend the vacancy tax in the event of another economic downturn.

These changes would have zero effect on the majority of existing businesses along San Mateo Avenue, whose proprietors routinely maintain their building facades in order to attract customers and grow their businesses.

While enacting the entire Streetscape plan will be costly and is currently out of reach, we can’t just sit back and do nothing. There are several lower-cost improvements we can start making now, like removing the large planters and planting native shade trees directly in the ground, improving signage and replacing fixtures like garbage cans and benches.